Tech Square's Smallmart branded as the world's tiniest Walmart, is no more

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? When Georgia Tech students start fall semester on Aug. 17, they will be without a tiny friend in Tech Square that's provided toiletries, groceries, and prescriptions to the college campus and surrounding residents. 
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? The 5th Street Walmart Express, which billed itself as the mega-retailer's smallest location ever, closed the tiny store's doors on July 3, leaving former patrons confused.
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? Store management posted a sign warning of the closure for a month prior to locking up. People who used to pick up their medicine at the mini-Walmart will have to make their way to Howell Mill’s Walmart to grab prescriptions.  
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? Walmart’s corporate office did not respond to CL's repeated inquiries asking why the store, which opened in August 2013, closed. Georgia Tech Campus Services did not know why the retailer shuttered the location.   ?

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? But according to the Technique, Georgia Tech's student newspaper, the store's tiny size proved to be its downfall. A former employee told the paper prior to the store's closing that the space wasn't big enough to stock the daily inventory drop delivered from a larger Supercenter.
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? “We had no backroom storage, and there was no cooler space in the back, so we received our inventory every day from the Supercenter, and whatever we got that day was all we had to put out,” Staff Pharmacist Carla Gillespie-Berry told the Technique. “It wasn’t that we weren’t successful, and we loved being here — it was just we needed more space.”
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? In addition, the paper says, the imminent opening of multiple high-rise apartment buildings around Tech Square could have sparked an uptick in business that the Walmart Express couldn't logistically accommodate. Publix Media Relations Manager Brenda Reid says the Midtown Publix, which operates just two blocks north of the old Tech Square Walmart, is seeing a small bump in business since the closure.
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? The “Smallmart” will remain vacant until Georgia Tech’s campus services decides what to put in the space next. ?

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