Albany, OR. Speculations of Wal-Mart at Shopping Center
Will Albany shopping center have a Wal-Mart? [Albany Democrat-Herald]
Albany planning officials are getting ready to handle a site plan application for a major shopping center east of Interstate 5.
There is speculation that the center will be anchored by a Wal-Mart store because SmartCentres, the Canadian firm proposing the development, has worked mostly with that company.
Wal-Mart tops the list of U.S.-based companies SmartCentres names on its website as its tenant partners.
SmartCentres had a pre-application meeting last Wednesday with city planners about its plans for 25 acres on the southwest corner of Santiam Highway and Goldfish Farm Road.
Part of the site was known as the Ropp property when the city council rezoned it from residential to regional commercial use in 2006.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 11 | 0 comments | Permalink
Pittsfield, MI. Wal-Mart Store Plans Press On, Depsite Years of Delay
Wal-Mart building expected in 2008 [Ann Arbor News (Mich.)]
Construction of the new Wal-Mart store at State Road and US-12 in Pittsfield Township probably won’t get started until late winter or early spring 2008, a company spokesman said.
If so, that will be more than five years after the company first applied to build the store, spawning an intense opposition movement and a failed attempt to recall three township officials.
Wal-Mart spokesman Nick Infante acknowledged that the store has taken a long time to get built since it was first proposed in late 2002, but he said Wal-Mart is still committed to the project. “We’re still going,’’ Infante said. If work begins early next year, the store could open in mid-summer 2008, he said.
Infante said the company is still working with the Washtenaw County Road Commission on engineering plans for road improvements around the new store. He expects those plans to be done by the end of this month. After that, it may take the company one or two months to find a contractor to build the store and do the road work, Infante said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Vadnais, MN. City Center Plans Debated
Vadnais split by Wal-Mart-anchored town center [Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal]
A proposed 300,000-square-foot retail development in Vadnais Heights has pitted the growing community’s desire for a town center against its opposition to big-box retail. The town center has lost the first two rounds, but Round 3 is scheduled for later this month.
A 193,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter would anchor the Village at Vadnais Heights, surrounded by roughly another 110,000 square feet of other retail near Interstate 35E and County Road E. The Wal-Mart store and 11 other retail buildings would be connected by plazas, bistro areas, outdoor fireplaces, water and nearly two miles of walking paths.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Red Bluff, CA. Wal-Mart Moves Ahead
Red Bluff Wal-Mart Supercenter ‘on track’ [Red Bluff (Calif.) Daily News]
It’s getting close to a year since Wal-Mart won a hard-fought campaign to get approval of a supercenter in Red Bluff. To date, not a shovelful of dirt has been turned.
That could change any month, but just when remains speculation as the retail giant’s representatives are not willing to set a timetable or even offer the public a ballpark guess.“We are still on track in terms of moving the project forward,” were what appeared to be reassuring words this week from Kevin Loscotoff, regional manager for Wal-Mart public affairs in San Francisco.
“We are still working on our construction plans,” he said. “We do not have a set date.”
Loscotoff said Wal-Mart also had some concerns about litigation still pending against it regarding the new supercenter that will be constructed on Luther Road just behind the existing store. Suit was filed last December by some of a small group of activists who had actively opposed approval of the new store.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Ontario, CA. Residents Appeal Supercenter Decision
Appeal filed to stop Wal-Mart [San Bernadino County Sun]
There was little shock Friday afternoon when city officials learned the Planning Commission’s Aug. 30 decision to allow a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the city had been appealed.
“I heard it was delivered,” Mayor Paul Leon said of the appeal. “And the Mountain Village Association is within their rights.”
After about six hours of public comments - and years of vocal opposition by segments of the community - the commission approved a Supercenter at Fifth Street and Mountain Avenue.
The appeal was filed by San Diego-based Briggs Law Corporation, which is led by attorney Cory Briggs.
Briggs - whose aunt and uncle Kathy and Richard Briggs of Ontario launched www.stopwalmartontario.com - is no rookie at going head to head with the corporate giant.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Oregon State Land Use Board Sends Case Back to Medford
State sends Wal-Mart case back to Medford [Mail Tribune (Ore.)]
A state land use appeals decision issued Friday is a big win for a group opposing a new Wal-Mart Supercenter in south Medford.
Medford’s City Council will hear debate over a Wal-Mart Supercenter traffic study at least once more before a final decision on whether the massive store can be built.
The Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) ruled Friday that the city was incorrect in denying a local citizens group the right to participate in proceedings about the store in November 2005. The city attorney denied the group the right to speak during one of the hearings, saying it had lost standing when it failed to file a brief in a 2004 LUBA appeal.
But the board ruled Friday the city must conduct additional proceedings to let the petitioner talk.
A citizens group called Medford Citizens for Responsible Development, led by Talent City Councilwoman Wendy Siporen, has argued the developers of the 207,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter project should have been required to conduct a comprehensive traffic study for the site, which would have made the giant retailer responsible for building any street improvements made necessary by traffic the store would produce. The project is proposed for the former Miles Field site.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Freetown, MA. Small Town Passes Big Box Cap
On May 5, 2007 Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart had filed an application to build a superstore on top of a former coal ash landfill in Freetown, Massachusetts, with rare turtle habitat, and millions of dollars of needed traffic improvements. Developer K.R. Rezendes proposed a Fly Ash Landfill Redevelopment on 81.38 acres, which operated until 2002, when it ceased accepting and disposing of coal ash. 80% of the landfill has been capped, and the remaining 20% uncapped landfill will be filled over as part of the “Payne’s Crossing” project. This huge retail project will create 40 acres of impervious surface area. It also contains nearly 10 acres of bordering vegetated wetlands, and nesting habitat for the Diamondback Terrapin, a state protected threatened species. In Phase I the fly ash landfill would be closed, followed by construction of a 170,000 s.f. home improvement store, a 217,000 s.f. Wal-Mart supercenter, and 1,600 parking spaces. In phase II, 95,700 sf of retail space would be added in five separate retail buildings, plus another 380 parking spaces.
More than 482,000 s.f. of stores would be built in total. This massive project would generate more than 25,100 car trips on a Saturday. Local residents have been fighting the project since the day the project was first announced. Residents went on the defensive, and got the town recently to pass a new zoning by-law “intended to preserve the small town character of the town of Freetown by limiting the size of retail establishments, wholesale establishments, and shopping centers.” Under the “cap” bylaw, “no single retail business, whether located in a single structure, a combination of structures, single tenant space, or aggregate of structures or tenant spaces in an aggregate of structures, shall exceed 25,000 s.f of floor area.” Any adjacent retail “which shares a common check stand, management, controlling ownership, or storage areas shall be considered a ‘single retail business’ and their aggregate square footage or floor area” is calculated into the size cap. The same 25,000 s.f. cap is applied to whole businesses, and to shopping centers. The bylaw also says all shopping centers and retail stores must be located on land that has at least 70,000 s.f. in area, and 20% of that land area must remain open space. The bylaw does allow a store or shopping center to exceed 25,000 s.f. in an industrial zone---but only with a Special Permit from the planning board. The town also added a Site Plan Review bylaw that is designed to “protect neighboring properties against harmful effects of uses on the development site.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Swansea, MA. Wal-Mart Denies Its Expansion Plans
Swansea, Massachusetts is a small community of roughly 16,000 people in southeastern Massachusetts, bordered by Barrington and Warren, Rhode Island, on the west and southwest, about 47 miles south of Boston, and 12 miles southeast of Providence, Rhode Island. The community already has a 100,000 s.f. Wal-Mart discount store at the Swansea Mall, which calls itself “a complete entertainment experience.” But now, as part of its drive to replace all discount stores, Wal-Mart has applied to build a bigger superstore in Swansea. The new store would expand to 161,000 s.f. according to a site plan submitted to the town by the mall’s owner, the Carlyle Development Group, based in White Plains, New York. Carlyle has been around since 1982, and calls itself an “expert in identifying undervalued real estate.” Carlyle bought the Swansea Mall six years ago from an insurance company, and the New York State Pension Fund. At that time, half of the four anchor spots at the Mall were vacant. Macy’s and Sears are two existing anchors in the Swansea Mall. Swansea’s Zoning Board was scheduled to meet this week to take up the expansion request---but apparently Wal-Mart doesn’t know about it. A company spokesman told the Providence Journal, “Wal-Mart has no publicly announced plans for Swansea at this time.” A formal site plan proposal submitted to a town is a “publicly announced plan,” yet the company was clearly not ready to lift the veil from its proposal. What Wal-Mart is doing in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, is systematically expanding or replacing its inventory of discount stores-—most of which were built in the 1990s.
Wal-Mart says it wants to build supercenters in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, in Woonsocket and Warwick, Rhode Island. These three supercenter proposals are relocations from existing stores---so three “dark stores” will be created by this power shift into larger boxes. Wal-Mart already has two supercenters in Rhode Island, which calls itself the “Ocean State,” but the ocean increasingly seems to refer to the ocean of asphalt created by big box developers. A Wal-Mart opened in the city of Providence, Rhode Island this year.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
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