Wal-Mart exempted from ordinance

The store would have faced new landscaping and parking restrictions. It still will try to conform to as many as possible.

By BRADY DENNIS

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 8, 2001

ZEPHYRHILLS -- It took less than five minutes Monday for City Council members to exempt a proposed Wal-Mart supercenter on U.S. 301 from the city's newly passed "big box" ordinance.

The ordinance -- which applies to retail centers 25,000 square feet or larger -- would require extra landscaping, more parking spaces and other restrictions on the site.

After the city passed the ordinance April 23, Wal-Mart officials called City Manager Steve Spina and complained that the site plans for the new store were 90 percent finished.

They said having to alter them for the ordinance would yield considerable and costly delay.

The building itself already was exempt from the ordinance because the council had approved the building plans months earlier.

The project had received a big boost recently after Wal-Mart and the state Department of Transportation finally agreed on an entrance to the site from U.S. 301 and access to Kossik Road with a frontage road.

So Spina called Monday's special council meeting to discuss an exemption.

"I felt like it wasn't really fair to change the rules on them in the middle of everything," Spina said recently. "That's not a good way to do business."

He said the project was too important to the city for the new ordinance to jeopardize it.

"We've got a lot at stake here," Spina said. "A whole lot more at stake than a couple of aisles in the parking lot."

The unanimous vote came four minutes into the 5 p.m. meeting. The council adjourned at 5:05 p.m.

As part of the exemption, Wal-Mart officials agreed to put in writing that they would cooperate with the city to meet as many of the requirements of the ordinance as possible.

That was enough to satisfy city planner Todd Vande Berg.

"I think it's good we'll still be able to provide input. That's what we wanted to do," Vande Berg said Monday. "I don't think there are lot of issues that conflict with the ordinance."

Council member Elizabeth Geiger was out of town for Monday's meeting. Mayor Roy Burnside and City Attorney Tom McAlvanah also were absent.

Wal-Mart is set to close on the property just off U.S. 301 on May 15.

- Brady Dennis covers the city of Zephyrhills and police news in east Pasco. His phone number is (352) 521-5757, ext. 23.

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