Johnson City, NY. Board to Meet

Johnson City board to meet on Wal-Mart plan [Press & Sun Bulletin (NY)]

The village board will again take its regular meeting to the spacious Johnson City courtroom tonight, in anticipation of another packed house to hear the board decide an aspect of a controversial proposed Wal-Mart project.

During the meeting, scheduled for 7:30 in the courtroom of the George Korutz Justice Building, 31 Avenue C, the board will decide whether to issue a special permit to allow developers to operate a retail store in an industrial zone.

Vestal-based Newman Development Group is planning to build a 132,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter and a 14,000-square-foot yet-to-be-named retail store on a vacant brownfield at 14 Lester Ave., the former Endicott Johnson Ranger Powercord site.

If the board votes to issue the permit, the project will have to pass only one final hurdle—approval of a site plan—before construction can begin.

The village planning board unanimously declared the project free of any significant environmental impact and approved subdivision of the property at its September meeting.

A grass-roots group opposed to the Wal-Mart, calling themselves the Coalition for Positive Revitalization for Johnson City, rallied at the site of the proposed project Sunday. The group’s organizers called on those against the retail store to attend tonight’s meeting en masse to show their disapproval of the Wal-Mart project

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, October 02, 2007

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