Walmart makes the case for a Bloomfield e-commerce depot against neighborhood opposition

PITTSBURGH — A development team for Walmart revealed its plan for a last mile delivery depot to the Pittsburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment, but it could be an uphill battle.

The national retailer faced organized opposition from the Bloomfield neighborhood as it starts the process of trying to get zoning approval for the standards of a grocery store when the operation won’t be open to the public and only serve online orders.

Griffin Bobbett, chief development officer for Kinetic Design + Development, representing Walmart on the project, introduced the presentation by noting, “this is not a retail use, actually. This is part of Walmart’s last mile program, which allows deliveries within 30 minutes of this location to be picked up from our gig workers, which are called Spark drivers. And so its intended use is to be able to pick up a limited number of SKUs for drivers for last mile.”