Alan Macken and his partners in the Palmetto Park joint venture scored a major coup for their Miami Gardens shopping center when they landed the world's largest retailer as a tenant.

The group's Palmetto Gardens Plaza has a new anchor, a 40,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, one of the latest of a series of large retail stores planned for South Florida. A proposed store is in the works for Palm Springs North and a long-running campaign has sought to bring a 203,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter to Midtown Miami. Meanwhile, Broward County commissioners have cleared the way for a $100 million Wal-Mart-anchored shopping center in Fort Lauderdale.

For Wal-Mart, the expansion strengthens its foothold and responds to renewed competition from deep discounters and aggressively growing dollar stores. Their neighborhood stores cut into the mega retailer's share of the bargain retail market.