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Council narrowly approves Wal-Mart plan

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Last edited 4:20 p.m., Feb. 26, 2013

Amid a lively and, at times, vocal anti-Wal-Mart crowd, Springfield City Council narrowly passed the retailer's rezoning request near the intersection of Campbell Avenue and Grand Street with a 5-4 vote.

Passions ran high before and after the vote, which allows Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to move forward with its plans to bring a fifth Neighborhood Market to town. The megaretailer had asked council to rezone about 6 acres at 444 W. Grand St. and 427–515 W. Normal St. to a general retail district with a conditional overlay district from residential high density and residential single family.  

Several outbursts occurred during the public hearing on the amendment to the zoning change that creates a no-build zone on 1.8 acres on the western half of the current Calvary Temple/Life 360 church property. One speaker against the bill, Midge Potts, was escorted by police from the meeting.

Lance Brown, former executive director of the Urban Districts Alliance, was one of five speakers opposed to the plans. He said a Walmart Neighborhood Market would kill downtown.

“It’s going to be green all right,” Brown said, referring to the no-build zone. “It’s going to suck the green right out of our downtown.”
 
Council members disagreed about the impact a new 41,000-square-foot Neighborhood Market would have on the neighborhood and the downtown area.

Councilmembers Jan Fisk, Jerry Compton, John Rush, Jeff Seifried and Mayor Bob Stephens voted in favor of the zoning change, while Cindy Rushefsky, Doug Burlison, Mike Carroll and Scott Bailes stood opposed.

Compton said the change was consistent with the city’s economic development policy and a general retail designation was appropriate for the area.

Bailes said council members had a duty to promote the public interest, and construction of a 10th Wal-Mart store would cause congestion and pull jobs away from locally based grocers. Officials of locally owned Price Cutter had mounted a campaign against Wal-Mart's plans.

“There are no new jobs. A store will open; a store will close,” Bailes said. “Four (Wal-Mart) stores opened last year and (the city's) sales tax revenue is down. We have to stop saying it's new jobs and new taxes.”

Burlison cited physicians' Hippocratic oath, saying he couldn’t approve the zoning change because he thought it would cause harm to the city.

Rushefsky said just prior to the vote that traffic concerns were one of the key reasons she could not support the proposal.

“I am very familiar with the Campbell and Grand Street intersection. I travel it frequently,” Rushefsky said. “I don’t need a paid expert or a traffic study to tell me that if that market goes in it will substantially impact the way people move in that intersection and in the vicinity of that intersection.”

Rush said the market would serve as economic development, and Stephens said the city shouldn’t stand in the way of Wal-Mart’s plans just because it’s Wal-Mart.

“We have a willing buyer and a willing seller. My question is, ‘Why should government interfere with that?'” Stephens said. “If you look at this property, if a church had not gone there, it would probably have been zoned general retail already.”[[In-content Ad]]

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