Utah Site Fight: Residents Remain Unsatisfied

Wal-Mart: Resentment lingers despite key changes [Davis County Clipper (Utah)]

Though compromise is often seen as the best solution to an unwinnable argument, it tends to leave behind a combination of resignation and resentment no matter where the lines of agreement are drawn.

Centerville city officials made sure that Wal-Mart, which will officially opens its doors Sept. 19, agreed to a long list of requirements ranging from traffic funds to noise restrictions before finally granting approval to the store’s development agreement in 2005.

With the big-box almost a reality, however, many residents still seem to feel that even the additional requirements weren’t quite enough.

“I still think we’ll have problems with Wal-Mart we never would have had with other stores that were already here,” said Centerville resident Monica Gardner, who presented a study to the City Council, linking Wal-Mart with significant increases in crime. “I’m very disappointed.”

Though an anti-Wal-Mart group claimed to have surveyed city residents in 2004, a smaller but more well-documented representation of city opinion is the public hearing held by the Planning Commission in April of 2004 at Centerville Junior High School.

During the hearing, 42 residents took their turns at the microphone, with 86 percent opposed to Wal-Mart coming to Centerville.

Their protests ranged from everything to traffic to crime to Wal-Mart’s business history, with city officials taking many of those fears into consideration as they designed their conditional use permit to mitigate Wal-Mart’s impact on the city.

“I didn’t want Wal-Mart here because I was afraid it would change the basic nature of Centerville,” said former Centerville Mayor Michael Deamer.

“We were a rural bedroom community where children and families could prosper, and I wanted to protect that as much as possible.”

As part of the requirements for their conditional agreement, Wal-Mart agreed in October 2005 to fund over $200,000 in city traffic projects, including four already on Centerville’s agenda, as well as increasing the buffer zone around Wal-Mart, restricting the number of trucks that could arrive, additional trails, and an agreement that Wal-Mart would restore the property to an alfalfa field if it remained unoccupied for two years among other requirements.

“I still don’t like Wal-Mart,” said Centerville resident Jerome Hainsworth, who spoke at the 2004 public hearing. “But I think the city has been trying to respond to concerns that Wal-Mart needs to be a cleaner, better store.”

One concern that hasn’t been directly addressed by the city is the fear that Wal-Mart would drive nearby smaller stores out of business. Though word from corporate offices has forbidden the managers of many of those smaller stores from talking to the press, several of them had expressed in a June 26 Clipper article that they felt there would be enough business to go around.

At the moment, the facts seem to be supporting that theory.

“I haven’t seen anybody close because of Wal-Mart yet,” said Donna Wilkinson, who handles business licensing for Centerville. “In fact, more commercial businesses are coming to the area around Wal-Mart in force.”

Some local business owners, however, have yet to be convinced.

“When people say that Wal-Mart won’t carry the same products as us, it doesn’t matter,” said Janet Wenzel, who owns the Edelweiss gift shop with her husband. “There’s only X amount of dollars in the city, and they’ll all be spent at Wal-Mart.”

Those dollars, however, are seen by some residents as an actual advantage to having a neighbor like Wal-Mart move in, and officials have already estimated that Wal-Mart will increase the city’s sales tax earnings by 16 percent in the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

“I’m still happy to see Wal-Mart come,” said Centerville resident Conrad Wahlstrom. “I’d rather see that extra income and sales tax stay in Centerville rather than have it go to Layton or Salt Lake City.”

For many, however, larger considerations about Wal-Mart will never outweigh the more personal.

“I’d just as soon Wal-Mart didn’t come into the city,” said Norma Hainsworth. “But I knit, and they have the best selection of yarns. I’ll probably end up shopping there.”