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Wal-Mart Supercenter approved
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK, Times Staff Writer SPRING HILL -- Hernando County's latest and most controversial Wal-Mart Supercenter is a go. The world's largest retailer got the go-ahead Thursday from the county to build a megastore at U.S. 19 and Spring Hill Drive, overcoming months of complaints, challenges and obstacles thrown up by residents who oppose the 225,000-square-foot building. As soon as the contractor submits a formal application and the appropriate fees -- more than $670,000 in all -- the Hernando County Development Department will hand over the permit and work can begin on the county's third Wal-Mart Supercenter, director Grant Tolbert said. Wal-Mart plans to begin construction within two weeks, said Marilyn Healy, the company's Tampa-based lawyer. The store should open nine months later. "We're just glad to be moving forward in Hernando County," Healy said. It won't happen so quickly, though, if the Coalition for Anti-Urban Sprawl Efforts, or CAUSE, has anything to say about it. The group has battled Wal-Mart every step of the way, contending the store will create environmental, traffic and law enforcement nightmares for Hernando County. "I'm not happy with the fact that all of the issues have not been evaluated as closely as they should be," CAUSE founder Arlene Erdrich said. "I think the traffic has been fluffed over. The problems with crime have been ignored. . . . The fact is, the environment is not being considered, the bear corridor is not being considered. They're just being whitewashed." Members hired their own engineer to double-check the company's traffic study, questioned almost every statement of fact that Wal-Mart representatives made, and pressed unsuccessfully to have a role in the permit issuance process. They're now looking for new ways to kill the project. "If I were able to stop it by chaining myself to a tree, I would," Erdrich said. "But the way things go now is, they take you and arrest you. It doesn't stop anything and it creates more confusion. We obviously have at least a couple of legal options which we are, of course, discussing with our attorney." Fort Myers land use and environmental lawyer Ralf Brookes would not reveal his strategy, saying he needs to look closely at the situation before setting a course of action. "We will be reviewing the permits," Brookes promised. Healy responded simply, "We'll aggressively defend our right to build." Tolbert contended that residents' input caused the supercenter design to look quite different at the end from what it did at the start of the government review. The community convinced commissioners to adopt design standards for retail stores more than 25,000 square feet and to revise the commercial landscaping rules, he said. The ordinances took effect after Wal-Mart first applied for permits, Tolbert said, but the company agreed to incorporate all the requirements into its design. "I think those two items will make a significant difference in the look of that project, compared to the one on (State Road) 50," Tolbert said. Healy agreed, and said the new rules will improve the appearance of all future retail stores. Commissioner Chris Kingsley, who sponsored the landscaping ordinance, offered a less cheerful opinion of what happened. "We got as many concessions as Wal-Mart was willing to give," Kingsley said. He said the county should change its accepted traffic level of service to a less congested standard. He also proposed that commissioners take back some control over large-scale development to avoid future instances where they can do little but throw up their hands. "Our input should have more validity than it does," Kingsley said. Residents turned to commissioners for help, he noted, "but sometimes it seems like we're impotent to act."
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From today's Hernando Times Letters |
