Languishing lot owned by Walmart attracts illegal dumping, Penn Hills officials say

An empty lot owned by Walmart and once slated for a Supercenter has become a headache for Penn Hills officials as they try to clamp down on illegal dumping.

Code enforcement officer Jason Griffiths said piles of tires, trash bags and debris from home renovations recently have appeared in the roughly 50-acre lot near the intersection of Reiter and Saltsburg roads, leading the department to install cameras in the area.

“There’s been a spate of dumping so we put some cameras up to see what’s going on, and we caught a few people,” Griffiths said. “There is one person we do have an identification on.”

The department has been in contact with Penn Hills police and continues to investigate.

Chief Ronald Como acknowledged longstanding dumping problems at the site, as well as trespassers on dirt bikes and ATVs who have carved trails on the property.

A sliver of the site sits in Plum. According to Joseph Little, public information officer for borough police, his department has not received any complaints about dumping.

Griffiths wants Walmart to take action. The company said it’s working on it.

“We are engaging a contractor to inspect the lot and clear any debris that has been dumped on our property,” said Brian Little, global communications director for Walmart.

Little, the Walmart spokesperson, said there are no plans to develop the property at this time.

Not too long ago, the company made an ill-fated attempt to establish multiple locations in the municipality.

In 2005, Walmart submitted plans to build a more than 200,000-square-foot Supercenter on the Saltsburg Road lot.

Resident concerns and PennDOT regulations pushed the world’s largest retailer to downsize its ambitions in 2010, proposing a smaller store, a series of traffic lights and additional lanes on Saltsburg Road. That never happened.

The lot was listed for sale in 2021 by Hanna Commercial Real Estate at an asking price of $2,100,000 but appears to no longer be on the market. Walmart did not respond to a separate inquiry on whether it intends to sell the land.

Walmart also flirted with building a Supercenter at the former East Hills Shopping Center in the late 2000s as part of the company’s Jobs and Opportunity Zone initiative, an economic development effort targeting urban areas.

The company ditched its plans for the shopping center around the time it revised its proposal for the Saltsburg Road lot.