Suisun City, CA. Wal-Mart Proposal Up for Consideration

Hearing set on Wal-Mart’s Suisun bid [Vacaville (Calif.) Reporter]

The Solano County Airport Land Use Commission will hold a public hearing Thursday to consider endorsement of a proposed Wal-Mart Superstore on Walters Road in Suisun City.
The proposed project would include 230,000 square feet of commercial space including the 215,000-square foot Wal-Mart, plus a fuel station with mini-mart, an 8,000-square-foot sit-down restaurant or commercial use and parking on a 20.8-acre site at the northwest corner of Highway 12 and Walters Road.

The commission will meet at 7 p.m. in the Solano County Government Center’s first-floor meeting room, 675 Texas St. in Fairfield.

The commission will consider whether or not the project is consistent with the Travis Air Force Base Land Use Compatibility Plan.

That plan sets guidelines for what can be built within a certain area around Travis, based on the potential impact the development could have on operations at the base.

Opponents of the proposed Supercenter have argued that it would negatively impact Travis. Suisun Alliance and the Suisun Citizens League in particular noted that the plan would violate the Travis land use plan’s restrictions on the number of people who can be on site of a development at any given moment.

In a report to the commission, however, county planning staff is recommending that the commission rule the development fits within the Travis land use plan.
The staffers noted that the buildings will be enclosed structures and built to block noise and that the pro- ject will not include more than 300 people per acre for an single event, a concern that had been expressed by staff early on in the process.

In its report to the commission, staff noted that it recalculated the numbers based on parking spaces and the expected number of people per vehicle trips to the site.

Opponents of the project aren’t buying the argument that the development would be safe.

In a press release Monday, the Suisun Citizens League and California Healthy Communities Network said an environment impact review on the project cites a number of “major detriments to citizens” should the Wal-Mart be built.

“The Wal-Mart store, according to the EIR, will increase traffic by nearly 50 percent on nearby Highway 12 - known as ‘blood alley’ - and surrounding streets, and dirty air and water, and threaten to close Travis Air Force Base,” the group insisted. “The draft EIR outlines other major problems, including drainage and storm water runoff - laden with heavy metals, grease, gasoline residues and other toxic chemicals - into the neighborhood, significant noise-level increase, police and fire departments impacts, road improvement costs, business and job loss and urban blight.”

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, November 06, 2007

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