Election to settle rezoning for store

Wal-Mart faces Russellville vote

Russellville voters will decide in a special election Aug. 13 whether to uphold a zoning decision that permits a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market to be built along the city’s bustling West Main Street. Early voting starts Aug. 6.

“There are some with other interests that believe their businesses will be adversely affected” by the proposed Wal-Mart, Jeff Pipkin, president of the Russellville Area Chamber of Commerce, said Wednesday. The chamber formed a campaign group, Committee For Community Progress, to push voters toward affirming the Russellville City Council and Planning Commission’s earlier decisions to allow the rezoning for Wal-Mart construction.

There are some residents in the area of the site, Pipkin said, who are concerned about potential dangers caused by the expected increase in traffic, but those opponents are few in numbers.

“I feel very strongly that Wal-Mart officials have taken every step they can to minimize the impact,” he said. The store is planned for a 8.82-acre plot at the corner of West Main and South Vancouver streets. About 5 acres of the area will be green space with a pond, and Wal-Mart plans to put in more than 150 new trees, one source said.

Russellville attorney Richard Peel, said to be the spokesman for a group opposed to the rezoning, was out of the country on vacation Wednesday and unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile in Missouri, the fight is over for a group of Springfield residents who fought construction of a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market on the southwest corner of West Grand Street and South Campbell Avenue, in the midtown area of the growing college town. An Aug. 6 vote had been set on whether to overturn the Springfield City Council’s April decision to rezone a 6-acre tract so Wal-Mart Stores Inc. could build the market.

The council’s decision motivated a couple of anti-development groups - Volunteers for Citizens Advocating for Responsible Development and Stand Up to Wal-Mart - to get the needed 1,800 signatures on petitions to put the issue to a vote. In response, landowners Life360 Church and adjacent property owners Robert and Jennifer Buchanan sued the city over the election. They wanted the sale to Wal-Mart to go through.

On Tuesday, Missouri Circuit Judge Gerald Mc-Beth ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, preventing the election. McBeth said in his judgment, Springfield’s referendum process for use in zoning matters conflicts with state law.

The ordinance approving the zoning change was suspended by the referendum petition, but McBeth’s ruling lifts that suspension, allowing for the general retail zoning from its previous high-density, multi-residential and single-family residential zoning.

“The city does not plan to appeal the suit, so this one’s said and done,” said Cora Scott, Springfield’s director of public information and civic engagement.

In November, Wal-Mart backed out of plans for a store in Bella Vista after heavy opposition attracted enough signatures on a petition to put rezoning to a vote. The day before the election, Wal-Mart said it pulled the project after discovering the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department could not support plans for a traffic signal at the intersection where the store was planned.

For the Russellville store, Wal-Mart is committed to paying to install a traffic signal at West Main if deemed necessary by the Highway Department. The retailer has also agreed to kick in $125,000 for surrounding infrastructure development.

Business, Pages 25 on 07/25/2013

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