Ontario, Calif. Council Meets on Wal-Mart Issue
Wal-Mart issue tops council agenda [Daily Bulletin (Calif.)]
A special meeting has been called tonight for the City Council to vote on a Planning Commission approval of a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter.
It will take place at 6 p.m. at the Ontario Convention Center’s Ballrooms A and B located 2000 Convention Center Way.
The meeting was called because the decision made by the Planning Commission in August was appealed, said Ontario Councilman Jason Anderson. The City Council will make the final decision concerning the Wal-Mart.
Tonight’s meeting will review the decision made by the Planning Commission. It will also review the subsequent environmental impact report and all of the records in and around that, including staff reports and input by the citizens, Anderson said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 25 | 0 comments | Permalink
Ontario, Calif. “Panel Ignores Opponents”
Panel ignores opponents of Wal-Mart [Daily Bulletin (Calif.)]
The Ontario Planning Commission ignored the concerns of hundreds of residents who opposed approval of the Wal-Mart Supercenter at Fifth Street and Mountain Avenue, and I am very worried that our City Council members have already made up their minds to ignore us, too.
Some of the issues raised at the Planning Commission meeting were:1. My wife and both asked the city to define general merchandise in order to find out if Wal-Mart planned to sell weapons, ammunition and alcohol directly across the street from a park. Apparently the planning commissioners didn’t care about this, because we never had a response. However, they have a concern about the number of video games Wal-Mart will have and whether or not they will placed in the doorway.
Didn’t they think access to guns was a legitimate concern?
2. A school board member presented a resolution unanimously approved by the Ontario-Monclair School District opposing a project of this magnitude due to the Supplemental Environmental Impact Report findings related to health and safety issues. No one even acknowledged or responded to them at all.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 25 | 0 comments | Permalink
Freetown, MA. Battle Rages Over Traffic
Opponents hope traffic solution will jam up Freetown mall [Boston Globe]
When officials from KGI Properties LLC heard about an 80-acre parcel of land on a former fly ash dump with access to a major highway, they saw opportunity - a prime location for a shopping center with two large retail stores.
But when Brian R. Dunning, who lives in the sleepy Payne’s Cove area, studied KGI’s plans for the 450,000-square-foot “Payne’s Crossing” development, he saw what he considers to be a pending disaster for Freetown.
The battle has raged ever since. Many residents, convinced that a Lowe’s home improvement store and a Wal-Mart are headed their way, have rallied to block the development they fear will choke their roadways, endanger threatened turtles, and pollute the bay. Their Assonet Bay Action Committee now boasts more than 300 supporters.
It is, by their own estimation, an uphill battle. Dunning offers this sober evaluation: “I think the odds are in favor of the developer. But it’s a little bit like David and Goliath. I just know that if this goes in, the town will be forever changed.”
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 25 | 0 comments | Permalink
Schnecksville, PA. Residents Start Petition to Battle Wal-Mart
Schnecksville, Pennsylvania is an 1.3 square mile area within North Whitehall Township. Schnecksville is a suburb of Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Lehigh Valley, with a population of roughly 2,000. The community has 7 Wal-Mart stores within 20 miles, including three supercenters, with a supercenter in Whitehall a mere 7 miles away. In its continuing drive to saturate the area, Wal-Mart has proposed a 176,846-s.f. superstore on 32.6 acres at Route 309 and Levans Road. North Whitehall Supervisors will have the final say on the proposal, and are currently selecting a traffic engineering firm to study the impact of the Wal-Mart plan on the already proposed widening of route 309. The Route 309 improvement project has been in the planning for several years. The road-widening project is estimated to cost as much as $13.5 million, and will include the widening of a one-mile stretch of Route 309. The state estimates that 309 carries an estimated 18,500 vehicles travel daily. A Wal-Mart supercenter could increase that total by more than a third. The state Department of Transportation and the federal government have provided the major funding for the design and construction work, which will now have Wal-Mart as its primary beneficiary. The façade of the Wal-Mart store will face the south rather than the highway, according to the Morning Call newspaper. The project is currently under review by the The township’s planning commission, and Wal-Mart held an “an open house” for residents at the Lehigh Carbon Community College recently. Despite this PR push, local residents in Schnecksville are starting to organize against the superstore.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 25 | 0 comments | Permalink
Pohatcong, NJ. Furniture Store Objects to Wal-Mart Plan
Usually retailers are silent on the subject of Wal-Mart. In one small New Jersey town, a furniture store is speaking up, but its concerns may get ‘tabled.’ Pohatcong, New Jersey is a very small township in Warren County, with a population of roughly 3,400 people. The township has been losing population since 1970, and could never support a Wal-Mart supercenter without major help from shoppers in the larger trade area around it. But the surrounding communities already have Wal-Marts. There are six Wal-Marts within 16 miles of Pohatcong, including a discount store 4 miles away in Phillipsburg, and a supercenter 8 miles away in Easton, Pennslyvania. Wal-Mart’s application to build a superstore in tiny Pohatcong must have looked like a cake walk to the retailer, but its application now pending before the township’s land use board has hit a snag. In an unusual move, another regional chain store retailer has raised objections to the plan. According to the Express-Times newspaper, the Raymour & Flanigan Furniture company, which is planning a neighboring store of its own, has intervened in the Wal-Mart case. The furniture company became an objector after hearings on Wal-Mart’s proposal began.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 24 | 0 comments | Permalink
Bakersfield, CA. Half-Built Pair of Wal-Mart Supercenters Finally Restarted
Wal-Mart’s long, twisted journey in Bakersfield, California may soon be over. It wasn’t the way Wal-Mart wanted, and they have lost as much as one billion in sales and legal costs already---but the city of Bakersfield appears ready to approve not one—but two---new Wal-Mart supercenters. On June 12, 2005, Sprawl-Busters reported that a deal approved in court had left a Wal-Mart supercenter in Bakersfield half-built. The developer, Lee Jamieson, and the citizen’s group, Bakersfield Citizens for Local Control, agreed that nothing would happen on the site until June 1, 2006. The city approved the project back in February of 2003, but citizens challenged the way the process was conducted, took their case to the California 5th District Court of Appeals, and the court overturned the first city approval, saying the city had done a poor job of figuring out if building the project would harm the environment. At the same time, the court also overturned approval for a second Wal-Mart Supercenter project in Bakersfield, this one proposed by Castle & Cooke. For more than a year, these projects have lurked half-built on the site. But this week, two years after the court stalemate, the stores received the support of the City Planning Commission after a four-hour meeting. One of the supercenters is located at Panama Lane and Highway 99, and the other at Pacheco and Gosford roads. One Bakersfield City Planning Commissioner couldn’t contain his exuberanace over the prospect of two new supercenters. “You just mix together people with jobs with income buying up the real estate. I don’t think there’s a finer example of the American dream going on,” he was quoted as saying. But the “jobs” coming from two Wal-Mart supercenters are going to be drawn from existing, unionized grocery stores in Bakersfield, which translates into a loss of buying power, because the Wal-Mart pay less. The American Dream is, in fact, unraveling in Bakersfield. The City Council will meet on November 21st to consider the recommendations of the Planning Commission.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 24 | 0 comments | Permalink
Clovis, CA. Residents Say Wal-Mart Will Destroy Way Of Life
On August 3, 2003, Sprawl-Busters reported that City planning commissioners in Clovis, California had voted 3-1 for preliminary approval to a zoning change that would require conditional use permits to open super stores that are larger than 15,000 s.f. The zoning change was suggested by area merchants in response to plans for a 200,000 s.f. Wal-Mart supercenter. That was four years ago. Unfortunately, requiring a conditional use permit is helpful, but not a foolproof way to stop big box stores. This week, more than 200 people crowed into a City Council meeting room in Clovis for a public hearing on a proposed Wal-Mart supercenter that lasted six hours until 1:30 am, according to the Clovis Independent newspaper. The City Council voted to postpone a decision on the project’s environmental impact report. Small-business owners warned of losing shoppers to the Wal-Mart shopping center, which is planned for Clovis and Herndon avenues. Neighbors complained about increased traffic and pollution, and the Clovis police officers warned of an increase in crime. Testimony was also heard regarding the impact of the superstore on Old Town Clovis, the existing core commercial area. “When you build that super Wal-Mart, you’re going to destroy downtown Clovis,” one resident said. “You’re going to destroy the Clovis way of life.”
Council members in the end voted to take up the environmental impact report on Oct. 15th. The project would sprawl over 50-acres, and would include 10 major retailers, including a Wal-Mart Supercenter, Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Petco, Old Navy and Ross Dress for Less. The Wal-Mart Supercenter would be 228,754 s.f. and would be open 24 hours a day. Wal-Mart already has a discount store in Clovis only 3 miles away, which would close. The developer told city officials that the Clovis’ population could handle two Wal-Marts.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 24 | 0 comments | Permalink
Medford, OR. Procedural Hoops & Hurdles Drag On For Wal-Mart
Four years and counting. That’s the sad story for a Wal-Mart supercenter proposal in the city of Medford, Oregon. The city council eventually approved the project---but the legal persistence of local residents has prevented any work from proceeding on the store. On May 22, 2004, Sprawl-Busters reported that the Medford City Council had overturned an advisory commission’s recommendation, and rejected a proposal to build a 207,000 s.f. Wal-Mart Supercenter in the south end of the city. The Medford Council voted 5-1 to reverse the Site Plan and Architectural Commission’s April 2 decision to approve the Wal-Mart. That was nearly three and a half years ago, but Wal-Mart is still in the mix in Medford.
Since Wal-Mart first submitted an application in 2003, residents and business owners have raised concerns including the impact on existing traffic problems, compatibility with adjacent buildings and effects on local business. Medford Citizens for Responsible Development (MCRD) is a grassroots organization working to ensure public involvement in local development decisions, and has organized formidable opposition to the Wal-Mart development for four years now. Residents have been concerned that City leaders have historically allowed development at all costs, regardless of impacts to taxpayers, traffic congestion, or local community desires. Appeals have been raised to the State Land Use Board of Appeals twice throughout the course of the application, and LUBA ruled against the City of Medford, citing procedural errors in avoiding the full traffic study. The “procedural error” that took place in November of 2005, was when the City council denied MCRD the chance to testify on the comprehensive traffic study. The LUBA ruled September 14th that the city had erred, and this week, in response, the City Council has said it will not to appeal LUBA’s decision. “I think the land use process is a complicated process, a bunch of hoops and hurdles you have to jump through. Its set up to give all the protections in the world to protect both the property owners and the neighboring property owners and do things right,” Medford city councilman, Jason Anderson, told KTVL television. “The reason the city didn’t allow [residents] to speak [was] based on city attorneys advice they weren’t the ones who appealed a previous hearing---they lacked standing.” The City Council now has to schedule more public hearings on the project. Wal-Mart, however, has a week from today to decide whether or not they will appeal LUBA’s decision.
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Posted by Al Norman on Friday, September 21 | 0 comments | Permalink
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