LODI, CA WAL-MART IN LIMBO

Chain’s interest in Lodi vague [The Record (Calif.)]

For some six years, the proposal to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Lodi has been a controversial saga that has invested many taxpayer resources, inspired a referendum and lawsuits, and elicited strong emotions from city leaders, merchants and residents.

Now, it is unclear whether Wal-Mart still is interested in the project.

City planners say they have no idea what the retailer has in store and have not heard from its representatives in at least a month. That comes as the discount chain has scaled back growth of its Supercenters and withdrawn plans in other California communities.

“We’re ready to move forward when they tell us,” said Peter Pirnejad, Lodi’s planning manager. “We’re just waiting.”

The project’s planners have not given any indication to Wal-Mart’s future in Lodi. A spokesman for the retailer, Aaron Rios, could not be reached for comment.

In an interview in April, Rios was hesitant to provide details, only saying Wal-Mart was weighing its options.

Developer Darryl Browman, who is slated to build the shopping center Wal-Mart would anchor, also could not be reached for comment.

It has been a tug-of-war ordeal to bring a 226,868-square-foot Supercenter to Lodi’s west side, at the intersection of Kettleman Lane and Lower Sacramento Road, and has left residents divided. Two years after Browman broached the shopping center project in 2002, voters defeated an anti-big-box ballot measure.

The City Council in 2005 approved the project, but a San Joaquin County Superior Court judge overturned the decision, ruling parts of a study of the shopping center’s environmental effects were insufficient.

The issue lay dormant for a while. In June 2007, Wal-Mart executives announced plans to slow growth of its Supercenters - retail stores that include grocery stores - in hopes of cutting costs. The company said it would build as many as 200 new Supercenters in 2008, down from 270, and scale back to about 170 a year for the next three years.

Still, in Lodi, plans appeared to be moving along.

In summer 2007, Wal-Mart representatives, worried they might have to provide aid to Lodi’s downtown and help preserve local farmland to build a Supercenter, started meeting one-on-one with elected leaders.

In October, the retailer released a draft of its court-ordered, revised environmental and economic analysis.

The document provided a varied assessment, concluding that a Supercenter might stunt the growth and rehabilitation of business in the city’s downtown core and that other retail centers in town could lose sales to competition, although many likely would not close.

During the public review period for the project, the city received dozens of written comments from residents, offering mixed support for the project.

City planners this spring were ready to review the revised project, but it was pulled from consideration after the California Department of Transportation asked Wal-Mart to modify a traffic lane near one of its entrances, Pirnejad said earlier this year.

The project has been in limbo since.

In the meantime, Wal-Mart has pulled plans for Supercenters in other California towns where it has met resistance, including Chico. In the Bay Area town of Oakley, Wal-Mart withdrew its plans in February because of the economic downturn.