As long as people keep flocking to the Gulfshore, the company that Sam Walton built will continue to add stores. "In Southwest Florida, the expansion opportunities for Supercenters, Neighborhood Market and Sam's Clubs certainly would be higher than other places [in the state]," says Eric Brewer, Wal-Mart's community affairs manager for Florida. Brewer says he can't be specific about future sites or numbers of those projects.

Currently, there are a dozen Wal-Mart stores in Charlotte, Collier and Lee counties, according to the company Web site. Cape Coral recently welcomed the region's first Neighborhood Market, a 40,000-square-foot store that offers groceries, cosmetics, hardware and other merchandise in a convenience-store arrangement. Typically, regular Wal-Mart stores and Supercenters range between 90,000 and 235,000 square feet.

Since opening its first Supercenter in 1988, the company has never closed one down, Brewer says. That's not to say that the retailer doesn't encounter challenges when it zeros in on a community. It does.

One difficulty is the price and availability of land. A large store needs a property large enough for parking, too. "The question is will they sell it to us. Some say 'I think I'll wait,'" in hopes of getting a higher sum, Brewer says.

Some neighbors simply don't want a Wal-Mart in their neighborhood and are vocal about it. For example, Estero sent the yellow smiley-face packing over zoning concerns.

"When you're the world's largest company, you have a big bull's eye on your back," Brewer says.

Still, Wal-Mart, which employs 93,000 statewide, has a roughly 90 percent success rate when building new stores, he says.

"At the end of the day, we do a very good job," Brewer says.

-Phil Borchmann