Duluth, GA. Wal-Mart Won’t Build

Wal-Mart Won’t Build In Duluth [CBS 46 (Ga.)]

Many residents of Duluth were thrilled on Thursday when they found out that Wal-Mart withdrew its plans to build a store in Duluth.

Since June, residents have been trying to stop the building of a 176,000-square-foot store on 32 acres of land at Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Chattahoochee Drive. Glen Wilkins, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the decision not to build the store rested on both a corporate edict to slow the development of Supercenters and actions taken by Duluth, which kept construction from being able to take place until late January.

Wilkins said he had an estimate of how much money Wal-Mart had spent to this point to have the store approved, but that he could not release the amount because it was proprietary.

Not building at the site was a business decision, he said, and not related to the hundreds of Duluth residents who protested the store’s location. He said there are no immediate plans to look for other locations for stores in the area.

Last summer, the city put a moratorium on big-box development that kept Wal-Mart from gaining permission to build the Supercenter. That moratorium was lifted in December, and in January, the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals approved requests by the company to change some of its construction plans. The city denied Wal-mart the right to use a synthetic brick on two of the buildings’ sides and required the store to change the building dimensions, a move that increased the cost of the project.

Duluth’s attorney said in a letter that the city is not liable for $25 million a landowner has claimed in damages because of the big-box moratorium.

There are currently other Wal-Mart stores in Suwanee and on Pleasant Hill Road in Duluth.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, May 05, 2008

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