Noticias
y campañas
de la OCA
en español
Fears that a Wal-Mart will go into a proposed shopping center on the northeast corner of Riggs Road and Arizona Avenue have area residents bracing for another fight against the developer when the Planning and Zoning Commission meets tonight.
It's a battle they've been fighting for more than four years.
The commission will cast an advisory vote on the 30-acre project; City Council members have the final say Nov. 20. Resident activist Kirk Sibley has been sending out e-mails that urge neighbors to show up, and several others have sent protesting e-mails to city officials.
The developer, Diversified Partners, does not have an anchor tenant and won't market the center until its zoning request is approved, said project manager Liz Gaston. The company has added more than 200 trees and covered walkways to the plans and reduced parking as concessions, she said.
Sibley said that's not what neighbors want. "It took them two months to come back with 200 trees? We were hoping for a neighborhood shopping center, not a big noisy one with a lot of traffic," he said.
He said earlier that the design and size (114,000 square feet) of the proposed center's largest retail space limits potential users and he fears Wal-Mart is a shoo-in unless Diversified cuts the store size in half. The site, he said in a recent e-mail to supporters, should be "something our city can be proud of for years to come and not some cookie-cutter, sprawling big-box project."
Full Story: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles
/2008/11/05/20081105walmart-fight1105.html
