Walmart Customer Praises "Cement" Parking Lot.

A recent site visit to one of the Walmart parking lot pilot projects resulted in important information on the construction of the parking lot, but also yielded an insight to concrete parking areas often overlooked.

"Checking in at the local hotel, the desk clerk asked what brought me to town," reports NRMCA Senior National Resource Director Jon Hansen. "I told her I was there because of the new Walmart store. Without telling her my profession, she immediately started to tell me how what a nice store it is with that great ‘cement’ parking lot. She went on to say how the ‘cement’ parking lot was so ‘bright looking’ and how that she ‘has a small farm and buys a lot of heavy items she has to load in her car and that the carts roll so nice on the smooth cement’. She went on to tell me ‘that is what wears the wheels out on our valet carts here at the hotel, the rough asphalt.’"

"I came away from this conversation with a renewed perspective," Hansen said. "We spend a huge amount of time and effort on the technical aspects of concrete. This desk clerk brought back to my attention that we build for people to use and if the use experience is attractive and pleasant, then this too is as important as anything else we do."