Checking Out at Future-Mart

In the effort to imagine what a future massive grocery store would look like I imagined Future-Mart. Instead of picking items from store shelves a customer would wave a charge card over an item's shelf display scanner for instant purchase that a self-driving grocery cart would pick up. Items purchased could be gathered and delivered to a check stand with a robot arm with a scanner in the hand (distant cousin to the Canadian Arm from space shuttle times) for redundant checking or for those without a charge card and deliver them to the front of the store or electric car in the parking lot.

Rather than self-check out registers an alternative would be for a register robot arm with bar code scanner built into its hand to place items into a cart while tallying the costs  simultaneously.

Future-mart might be more practical though and simply let a customer place everything into a cart and at the register all of the items would be tally’d in the car instantly  because each item has a radio frequency transmitter or another form of very  short distance neo-RFT identifier that the register recognizes. A customer would initiate the process with a charge card and a receipt would print out with a list of all of the items purchased before the cart drove itself off to follow a customer outside. The cart would be made to have a box set in it that would lift up or slide out with the goods at delivery point.

For Sale; Decommissioned Wrangell Alaska Hospital

 For the price of a used home a 36,000 sq foot former city hospital with a great location just a mile from the airport and a half mile from a salt-water port may be had for purchase (if the price agreed to with the last developer who wanted additional properties free and let it fall through when he didn't get them still holds). I would think a non-profit could refurbish the building with a great metal roof and not pay property taxes. An estimate of the cost to build a new one like it is 14 million dollars U.S.

Apparently the city wants to sell the building in order not to pay for utilities annually. It is not a bad looking building at all though the city has let the grass go un-mowed and the exterior needs to be maintained. The inside could be gutted and just lad bearing elements retained so one could make numerous small condo units and a few stores within it, and outside on the grounds. There is adequate parking space and garages for storage.

Instead of heating the building while empty several quality dehumidifiers might have been place to keep the humid environment dry for less cost. I specialized at repainting buildings so I am completely amazed at the unwillingness to maintain it or convert it into some other purposed public structure.

https://www.wrangell.com/community/sale-old-wrangell-medical-center-and-property-over-counter

Od hospital buyers might not see the throughput of customer volume sufficient to support commercial purposes. Wrangell has fewer than 2000 people although the cruise ship industry is rising annually while fisheries are in decline. The site might be a good place for a remote small resource based technical college annex, executive retreat two hours from Seattle etc. A Large wind generator could supply off grid power occasionally (it should turn slow enough to not bother common bald eagles and ravens flying past.

The former Wrangell Hospital is at any rate an excellent place for a retirement project to make a few stores and condo spaces. With the passing on of the boomer generation there will be millions of existing buildings that will become vacant that need be refurbished rather than destroyed so new homes can be built. Getting rid of perfectly fine structures to build new ones is quite a bit costlier and wasteful of human and material resources.