New York Site Fight: Planning Board Set to OK Supercenter

Planning Board appears set to OK Wal-Mart supercenter project [The Buffalo News (New York)]

It may be October before the Wal-Mart supercenter project for the Lockport Mall site is approved, but it almost surely will be, Planning Board Chairman Richard Forsey said Tuesday.

At a work session, Leslie D. Senglaub, a Rochester attorney representing Wal-Mart, said all the retailer is requesting at the board’s formal meeting next Tuesday is an amendment to two sentences of the environmental impact report the board approved Dec. 28.

The changes would make it clear that Wal-Mart will be responsible for finding a new tenant for its existing Lockport store a quarter- mile south of the mall on South Transit Road. The Dec. 28 report reflects previous terms of the deal, under which the existing Wal- Mart was to have been swapped to General Growth Properties, which is selling most of the mall site to Wal-Mart.

A financial dispute between the companies caused the project to be put on hold for six months. Tuesday’s meeting was the first time the Planning Board has taken up the project since Wal-Mart asked for the halt.

Senglaub said, “The issues now have been pretty much resolved.”

Town Attorney Daniel E. Seaman said, “It’s not a substantive change. It’s questionable if it’s necessary.”

“We need to have that before we can advance further,” Senglaub insisted.

After the amendment to the environmental report, Wal-Mart still would need a special use permit, approval of its site plan and consent for a subdivision of the mall site.

Forsey said none of that would be acted upon until at least the board’s September meeting, but he saw no reason to think the approvals won’t come eventually.

The Planning Board spent more than a year wrestling with the plan and insisting that Wal- Mart make many changes, forcing it to change the store’s exterior design to the board’s liking and directing that the company pay for new sidewalks, traffic signals and water lines in the area.

General Growth will remain as landlord for the Bon-Ton store, the only surviving business in the mall, which is to become a standalone store sharing a parking lot with the 185,000-square-foot Wal- Mart. The rest of the mall is to be demolished.

Steve Cleason of APD Engineering, a Rochester firm hired by Wal- Mart, said the retailer originally sought 41 variances from the Zoning Board of Appeals. That number was later reduced to 38 with the addition of a few parking spaces.

But Cleason said variance requests could be reduced to 12 — six for Wal-Mart and six for Bon-Ton, if the Planning Board would grant waivers of certain provisions of its commercial corridor overlay district rules for South Transit Road.

Those provisions duplicate to a great extent the zoning ordinance provisions from which Wal-Mart is seeking variances. Seaman said the Zoning Board of Appeals isn’t allowed to vote on any variances until the Planning Board finishes its work.

“I don’t know if we’re going to waive all the things they want us to waive, but if we don’t they’ll just go before the Zoning Board of Appeals,” Forsey said. “The great majority of the variances were caused by the property line [between Wal- Mart and General Growth at the mall]. It’s a line on a piece of paper.”