WASHINGTON SITE FIGHT: SEEKING AN EXTENSION

Wal-Mart seeking two-year extension [Spooner (Wash.) Advocate]

The Washburn County Executive Committee has recommended approving Wal-Mart’s request for four, six-month extensions on the purchase of 35 acres of county property at Cty. Hwy. H and Hwy. 53, where Wal-Mart proposes to build a 153,000-square-foot Supercenter.

Currently Wal-Mart is under a six-month extension, its fourth, that expires Aug. 12.
The full board of the Washburn County Board of Supervisors meeting next Tuesday will have the opportunity to approve or deny the two-year extension, proposed in four, six-month chunks.

If adopted by the full board, Wal-Mart will pay up to $30,000 per extension, for a total of $120,00. The extension fees, as in the previous $52,500 for the four prior extensions, will be used against the final sale price, $901,000, negotiated in November 2005.

However, the new extensions have a caveat the previous four extensions did not – Wal-Mart would retain $10,000 of each $30,000 per extension if legal challenge prevails affecting the project.

Currently, only an appeal by Washburn County First (WCF), a local organization in opposition to the Spooner Supercenter, remains against the project.

WCF’s appeals is in response to Burnett County Judge Michael Gableman March 7 decision to drop WCF’s lawsuit against Spooner Board of Appeal (BOA) for granting an access variance, a variance which Gableman said was not even required because the city’s ordinance requires a setback requirement of 1,500 feet from a freeway and not an expressway, which Hwy. 53 is classified.

Monday night the Spooner Planning Commission and City Council held a special joint meeting where the city’s ordinance regarding access distances was repealed and and replaced with language reflecting standards used by the county.

The new ordinance requires accesses on Cty Hwy. H must be a minimum distance of 500 feet from either Cty. Hwy. 53 or Hwy. 63. The proposed Spooner Supercenter access is 1,100 feet from Hwy. 53.

Susan Steinwall, Wal-Mart’s attorney, said Wal-Mart was asking for two-year extension to ensure enough time to resolve all legal issues that might affect the Cty. Hwy. H and Hwy. 53 site.
Micheal Bobin, Washburn County chairman and Executive Committee chairman, pressed Steinwall if two years were enough.

Steinwall said she was confident a final legal decision or a resolution should easily be attained within two years.

During Wal-Mart’s last extension request, on Jan. 23, supervisors raised Wal-Mart’s proposed extension fee from $15,000 for a six-month extension to $30,000, previously Wal-Mart had paid $7,500 for three-month extensions.

Supervisors also raised concerns about Wal-Mart failing to finalize the purchase agreement. Because of the delay, some supervisors complained the county was losing potential property tax dollars on the site.

In the Jan. 23 meeting, Lisa Nelson, Wal-Mart’s Wisconsin senior manager of public relations, said road improvement issues had to be ironed out with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) and legal lawsuits raised by WCF needed to be resolved.

William Matzek, a representative from Wal-Mart’s engineering company, Olsson Associates, said his company was about one month away from coming to a final agreement with DOT and local engineers on exactly what road improvements will be needed.

Bobin pressed Matzek over the final cost estimate for all proposed road improvements.
Matzek said an accurate estimate would have to wait until all parties had come to an agreement on exactly what road improvements were needed.

In April, DOT, county and city engineers sent Olsson Associates an extensive list of road improvements needed to accommodate the high volume of traffic to the proposed site and also stated that the improvements should be accomplished before the proposed Spooner Supercenter opens and that all improvements should be funded by Wal-Mart.

Officials who have seen an initial estimate by Olsson Associates regarding the April list of road improvements have said Wal-Mart’s engineers estimated it would cost $4.8 million.

However, these same officials also believe Olsson used the wrong methodology in calculating cost and true cost is much lower.

Vote
After discussion with Wal-Mart’s representatives, every member the Washburn County Executive Committee voted, with a recommendation to approve, to send the resolution to the full board of supervisors for a final vote.

Posted by Beth Gostanian on Thursday, June 21, 2007

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