Wal-Mart gets green light on supercenter

Despite a heavy turnout of folks who spoke against the proposed Wal-Mart supercenter, the Polson city council voted to annex the property into city limits and rezone the area for commercial use at a meeting last Thursday, June 29.

They also approved a request to subdivide the property, which is located just south of the current Wal-Mart store.

The council voted 4-2 in favor of the zone change, changing the property to highway commercial from residential, although the proposed site was already surrounded on three sides by property zoned for commercial use. Councilmen Mike Lies and Mark MacDonald were the two dissenting votes.

The council voted 5-1 on the subdivision request, and 6-0 on the annexation request.

The votes on all three issues came after a couple hours of public testimony, in which a majority of the speakers urged the council to deny Wal-Mart's request. The meeting was held at Polson High School to accommodate the large number of people who turned out.

People wanting to weigh in on the issue were given two minutes to do so, in an effort to keep the meeting from going well into the night. It ended shortly after 10 p.m., in contrast to a May city/county planning board meeting that went past midnight.

Many of the supercenter opponents spent their allotted two minutes talking about Wal-Mart's track record regarding employee wages, enormous bargaining power and clout in the marketplace, and other negative aspects the company has long been criticized for, despite a reminder by mayor Randy Ingram to limit comments to the issues — zoning and annexation — facing the council.

However, Wal-Mart officials and consultants were given the opportunity at the beginning of the meeting to address those issues, too, and said the supercenter makes sense at the proposed location. A consultant with CLC, a Denver-based company working with Wal-Mart officials, said they will present a better design more consistent with the rural setting, in response to concerns raised by the city/county planning board at a May meeting in which they voted to recommend denying Wal-Mart's request for a zone change.

Scott Hagel, an attorney representing the company, said the city stands to benefit by increasing its tax base, and that annexing the property into the city and changing the zoning to commercial use would be in keeping with the surrounding property anyway.

Wal-Mart will have to pay higher taxes because of the value of the land, which will help the city make upgrades in infrastructure, Hagel noted.

But a majority of the several dozen people who spoke — about 75 percent — told the council to deny the requests.

Daniel Henning of Polson said the city is looking at "a flood of uncontrolled development" and said the city should serve the needs of local residents and businesses, not a huge corporation like Wal-Mart.

Charlo resident Jay Preston, chairman of Ronan Telephone Company, told the council that Wal-Mart's supercenter violates the Polson Development Code, citing provisions on views from the highway.

"If you do not follow your development code and city plan, then that means the entire plan is meaningless," he said.

Earlier in the meeting, a Wal-Mart consultant attempted to show the exact view of the building from U.S. Highway 93, using a computer-generated graphic, saying the store wouldn't hurt the view of Flathead Lake. Other proponents noted that there is already commercial development near the site, and viewable from Highway 93, including the Mission Mountain Les Schwab tire dealership and Nickel car dealership, plus the Miracle of American museum.

Preston was one of the few opponents who limited his remarks to the planning and zoning issues the council had to decide on.

"To change the zoning runs counter to the democratic process of zoning," Polson resident Carmine Mowbray said.

Many other opponents cited the quality of life here, saying the store would be an eyesore to the surrounding beauty.

"[People] aren't moving here for the big box stores," noted a Melita Island Road resident. "Let's keep the money in our local families, and not make the Waltons any richer."

Those that spoke in favor said the competition would be good, citing lower grocery prices in Missoula as the primary reason to justify a supercenter. Many noted that Polson is growing, and that change is inevitable, and that a supercenter would be a good complement to that growth.

Some people expressed surprise at the fact that the city council did not deliberate very long before voting on the three issues at the end of the meeting, leading some to conclude that the councilmen had made up their mind before the meeting. Ingram said in an interview earlier this week that it was no surprise that there was little deliberation, given the months the council has had to think about the issues.

"We've been dealing with this Wal-Mart issue for many months. I don't know this for a fact, but the council probably had a thorough understanding of the situation going into the meeting," Ingram said. "It certainly wasn't a surprise they were dealing with."

Ingram said he's not aware of any pending legal action over the council's decision, but that he wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

"It wouldn't be a shocker," he said.

Wal-Mart officials said at the meeting that city/county planning board members asked them to wait until after last Thursday's meeting to submit more design ideas, since the fate of the supercenter would largely be determined at last week's meeting. They reiterated their commitment to design a store that would look more appropriate in the rural setting, but did not present any new design ideas at the meeting.