SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Voters in the southwest Missouri college town of Springfield will decide in August whether to repeal zoning for a 6-acre property where Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wants to build a Neighborhood Market, the fifth in the city.
Wal-Mart submitted an application in late October for the store on the southwest corner of West Grand Street and South Campbell Avenue, in the midtown area of the city. Awareness for the project heightened in late February, when the Springfield City Council voted 5-4 to rezone the land - owned by the Calvary campus of mega-church Life360 - from high-density,multi-residential and singlefamily residential to general retail.
The council’s decision motivated a couple of anti-development groups to act. Volunteers for Citizens Advocating for Responsible Development and Stand Up to Wal-Mart collected more than 1,800 signatures for petitions to put the issue to a vote. A special election is set for Aug. 6.
In November, Wal-Mart backed out of plans for a store in Bella Vista, Ark., after heavy opposition attracted enough signatures on a petition to put necessary rezoning to a local vote. The election was the next day. 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.
Retired teacher Marla Marantz, spokesman for the Springfield group Citizens Advocating for Responsible Development, claimed the 41,000-square-foot Neighborhood Market is too large for the neighborhood “and too intense for this already severely congested area populated by more children than any other area.” She said the neighborhood is also heavily populated by the elderly and people with handicaps.
“It routes traffic through neighborhood streets, often without sidewalks, creating a dangerous situation,” Ma-rantz said.
The bottom line, she said: “Accessibility and safety should not be an afterthought.” The referendum was the only way to address the issues, she added.
Scott Youngkin, speaking for Stand Up to Walmart, was less concerned with the store’s impact on the neighborhood as he was Wal-Mart’s effect on the city in general.
“Springfield has a higher density of Wal-Mart stores than any city our size and many of the city’s residents feel that we have enough already,” he said. “With 49 percent market share in the city’s grocery sector already, Wal-Mart seems intent on totally dominating the city’s economy to the point that local businesses cannot survive.We are just people who care about our city trying to do the best we can.”
Youngkin got his figures from a recent story published by the online news magazine AlterNet.
Wal-Mart maintains that residents in the area want and need the Neighborhood Market and that “the louder voices in this discussion don’t represent the majority opinion,” said Wal-Mart’s Erica Jones, senior manager of communications, public affairs and government relations.
“The customer voice is clear and demonstrated every time we open a new location as thousands of local residents show their support by shopping our store. We believe this Neighborhood Market can be a solution to residents who want a job or access to fresh, affordable food,” Jones said. Wal-Mart has had a presence in Springfield for 40 years.
“They keep claiming these people want it, and they don’t,” answered Marantz.
All told, Wal-Mart has 11 Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and Sam’s Club warehouses serving Springfield’s population of about 162,000. However, there are many more residents in developed neighborhoods just beyond the outskirts of the city, said Ralph Rognstad, Springfield’s director of planning and development.
The staff recommended the rezoning, said Rognstad, because the city is encouraging development along its arterial streets, such as Campbell and Grant. Plus, he said, there’s ongoing development of student housing in the vicinity of Missouri State, which is about a half-mile away from where the store would be built, and the store could provide services to the resident students there.
Contact by phone and e-mail to Calvary Life360 pastor Tom Cederblom was unsuccessful. However, the church has said it wants to sell the land. Life360’s website outlines plans to develop a main campus on 136 acres of land the Assemblies of God church bought just west of Springfield at James River Freeway.
If the rezoning stands as is, the Neighborhood Market would take roughly nine months to build, officials said.
Business, Pages 67 on 05/26/2013