Summary of Wooten NA Meeting With Wal-Mart Representative

submitted by Kay Newell

Wooten NA meeting
Nov 13 2006
Richard Suttle of the law firm Armbrust & Brown - real estate lawyer for Wal-Mart

Per Richard, Wal-Mart is a tenant in Northcross Mall. The site plan went through all the normal city processes and has been issued. Wal-Mart will be leasing from Lincoln Properties. The lease was signed in the last month or two. In the last two weeks they have talked to City Council about the lease and the plans Lincoln & Wal-Mart have for Northcross. City Council members are the ones that said Lincoln/Wal-Mart had met with neighbors - this information is wrong. Tonight is the first meeting with neighbors.

Northcross is a redevelopment of an existing mall with Wal-Mart as a tenant. The duration of the lease is long-term. A question was raised - can this Wal-Mart be built along the lines of the Aurora, Colorado Wal-Mart. Richard said after the redevelopment of this mall the water quality would be better than it is now. There will be a retention pond on the west side of the property. Richard doesn't know if a TIA (Traffic Impact Analysis) was run, if it was it would be on file with the City. A TIA is run if there is an increase of 2,000 trips a day. The only thing left to do is to take out a building permit - since this is a redevelopment of an existing mall there won't be any zoning changes involved. A question was raised about the pending Big Box Ordinance - would Wal-Mart hold off and go through that process - Richard doesn't know, but will pass this and all other questions raised tonight on to Wal-Mart.

Richard said that because of the short notification of the meeting they were unable to get a representative from Lincoln properties or Wal-Mart at tonight's meeting. Consequently, there were a lot of questions that he could not answer.

Comments

[hope]

A group called Responsible Growth for Northcross plans to fight for a better vision than Lincoln Properties and WalMart have put forward. The group will be launching its website later this week at responsiblegrowthfornorthcross.org. The site will include details on a community meeting to be held the week after Thanksgiving for folks who want to join the fight.

[Margie Gordon]

My husband & I are "sick" about the news of the Wal-Mart moving into Northcross Mall
and its negative effect on our community. It comes with its reputation of destroying small businesses in areas and catering to a throw-away mentality created by cheap merchandise. A Wal-mart is still a Wal-mart, despite its outward appearance. This is just a guise the company uses to get into desirable neighborhoods/communitites. Read comments posted on a website dedicated to fighting Wal-marts in locations, www.walmartwatch.com.
Sendera Place NA in South Austin recently was able to defeat WM's plans to locate near their neighborhood. How were they successful?
My husband & I can help anyone who wants to protest.

[Jacqueline Wright]

What can we do, if anything, to stop WalMart from moving into NorthCross mall?
I'd be willing to help stop this... Please contact me if you know of anything. Thanks.

[Sheila]

Suttle confirmed this will likely be a 24x7 facility.