Sam's Club fight reaches City Council

"This site on Whiskey Road is the possible location for Sam's Club."

Officials at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. don't expect to further change the concept plan for a new Sam's Club warehouse store rejected Tuesday night by the City of Aiken's Planning Commission.

They are going to take their chances with City Council.

"I don't think there are any changes as of yet," said Tara Stewart, corporate spokesperson for Wal-Mart Inc. "We're just going to make sure we fit in the 'big-box ordinance' and make sure everything is in order for the City Council."

With most of a standing-room-only crowd opposed to a plan to build a new Sam's Club on Whiskey Road near the intersection with Powderhouse Road, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend that City Council turn down the retailer's proposal. Nearly two dozen people spoke against the store, saying it would cause traffic problems, lower property values and threaten the lifestyle of surrounding neighborhoods.

The stumbling block came even after Wal-Mart had one of its architects, Jamillah Muhammad of Perkowitz + Ruth in Reston, Va., make a number of design changes at the direction of the planning department to meet the City's rigorous ordinances governing large retail projects

"Staff asked, and we answered and said, 'Sure, we'll change and make sure it fits whatever you want for the community, whatever the guidelines say.' We made the changes they asked for already, so we feel we're well within the guidelines," Stewart said.

The Planning Commission - and even some members of City Council who were at the meeting and heard the public outcry - were unimpressed by the design changes. They also were unswayed by the argument that the Sam's Club location is in keeping with the Planned Commercial zoning approved with the property's annexation in 2003 with the adjacent Kensington subdivision and that it is consistent with the City's Comprehensive Land Use Plan. The Comprehensive Plan anticipated more mixed-use development of commercial and residential property together along the Whiskey Road corridor.

"They're really changing the nature of the usage on that spot from what we had approved," said City Councilman Dick Smith, who attended Tuesday's meeting. "I think everyone will agree that a huge warehousing operation that has a high rate of turnover, that is going to bring in big trucks all the time, it is a different, more intensive use of that piece of land on Whiskey Road than was contemplated and what has been previously approved."

Last June, the City Council approved a concept plan for a 105,000-square-foot shopping center, called Whiskey Station, with four outparcels along Whiskey Road. That development, planned by Augusta-based Nordahl Inc., never materialized.

Approval of the Whiskey Station plan included 11 conditions governing traffic signals and entrances to the property, landscaped buffers between the shopping center and adjacent residential communities and signage, among other details. That plan was approved also based on an accompanying 2003 traffic study

Many of the Whiskey Station conditions were incorporated into the rejected concept plan for the Sam's Club, and the planning documents stated that the City's traffic engineer had determined that a Sam's Club would generate less traffic than the approved but undeveloped shopping center.

"We feel like that we've met the guidelines. We were going for site plan approval last night; I think they got a little off-track," Wal-Mart's Stewart said. "The traffic study has been done. It's been zoned. We're way down the process here, and so the City Council should look at the ordinance and at the site plan specifically. That's what's before them, and we feel like they're going to make a decision based on the task at hand - not all the other periphery stuff."

Representatives from Nordahl Inc. didn't return multiple phone messages left at their office Wednesday.

Councilman Smith and others who oppose the new Sam's Club location contend that the 2003 traffic study doesn't take into account the latest commercial development along Whiskey Road or the difference between traffic created by a large warehouse store versus a standard shopping center.

Even the difference in square footage - 134,723 for the Sam's Club, about 145,000 for the Whiskey Station center - won't matter to the traffic, Smith said.

"There isn't something that specifically talks about a Sam's, and Sam's - we all know that it creates a different kind of traffic. Whether the numbers are accurate, we don't know," he said. "I would insist on a comprehensive traffic study of conditions as they exist right now on Whiskey Road and going more than a quarter of a mile away. It needs to look at the big picture."

Wal-Mart officials aren't averse to a new traffic study; they simply believe it's unnecessary.

"The traffic study was done. They didn't ask for a new one. Nobody told us they needed one. One already existed. They approved it," Stewart said. "We followed their advice. If they've changed their mind, they need to say that."

Smith isn't alone in his opposition to the proposed Sam's Club location. Fellow Council member Jane Vaughters also is prepared to vote against the concept plan.

"I think when 150 to 200 neighbors respond to a project and say they're not in favor of it, we're on City Council and we're elected to represent our neighbors, we need to listen to that," she said.

Most of those who spoke against the measure do not live in the City but reside in Elmwood Park, College Acres and other neighborhoods not yet annexed into the City - a fact that doesn't dissuade Vaughters from listening to them.

"It really shouldn't matter because we already realize with our Comprehensive Plan and with our push for an overlay district that adjoining areas to the City, in many ways, are just as important as what's within the City limits already," she said. "Otherwise, we would never do a plan that included anything that was not already in the City."

Vaughters, too, believes the Sam's Club plans fall short of the City's guidelines for large retail projects and is too different from the Whiskey Station center to warrant approval.

"I don't think that they have actually met all the requirements of the big box ordinance. In my mind, what I know about noise and buffers and all of that, it doesn't seem to go with the plan I saw last night," she said. "We brought this into the City on the basis of a particular design. This is bait-and-switch if you can submit a beautiful design and then after you get it into the City say, 'Oops! That's not what we really want to do.'"

Even if Sam's Club makes further revisions to the concept plan to fall within the City's guidelines for large commercial projects - three pages of specific regulations governing architecture, landscaping, even delivery schedules and traffic - Smith and Vaughters say they likely will reject the proposal.

"We don't have to accept another concept plan that has an entirely different kind of use, an intensity that was not expected of these other types of retail stores," Smith said. "There certainly are hard and fast criteria, but then appearance is always going to be subjective. If we don't like the concept plan, we can say no to the concept plan. The option is always there to say, 'We don't want that.'"

Councilman Don Wells, who wasn't yet on Council to vote on the June 2005 Whiskey Station plan but will get his shot at Sam's Club, is taking a wait-and-see approach - mainly because he doesn't want the Sam's Club debate to end up in court. He says he will do more research and consult with City Attorney Gary Smith before the Council's next meeting Aug. 14.

"I'd love to honor the wishes of our citizens, if at all possible," he said. "The thing that I could foresee keeping me from doing that is if legally we're going to open ourselves up for a lawsuit and spend a half million dollars of taxpayers' money for no good."