Sam's may get new site

Officials from the City of Aiken and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. met earlier this week to discuss possible alternative sites for a controversial Sam's Club warehouse store planned for Whiskey Road.

Meanwhile, City Council's consideration of the concept plan for the 134,000-square-foot store and 12-pump gas station has been delayed until it gets more information from the Arkansas-based retailer.

Mayor Fred Cavanaugh confirmed that he and other City leaders sat down Tuesday afternoon for a 90-minute meeting with representatives of Wal-Mart Inc., which owns the Sam's Club brand. Among the topics, the mayor said, "we discussed other locations."

"When you look at a map and really study it and talk about it, there are other good places," Cavanaugh said. However, he declined to discuss which specific alternatives might have been proposed during the meeting.

Tara Stewart, senior public relations manager for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said her company has not yet begun considering other locations. "Not at this point," she added.

City Council was scheduled to consider first reading of the new Sam's Club concept plan at its Aug. 14 meeting. Sam's Real Estate Business Trust wants to place the large warehouse store on a 19.5-acre tract near the intersection of Whiskey and Powderhouse Roads.

However, the issue has been postponed while the City and Wal-Mart Inc. await the results of a new traffic study, Cavanaugh said.

"There was no way to get it done before the 14th," he said, "and I mean, have the numbers and be able to go over them and understand them. We want to make sure we have an absolutely thorough analysis."

Wal-Mart Inc. has not withdrawn its original proposal for the Sam's Club, according to Stewart, but is using the delay to collect more data requested by City Council.

"We're working very closely with the Council and staff to make sure they have all the information they need to make an educated decision," she said.

The earliest the original concept plan could reach Council now is Aug. 28.

"Depending on whether all this information we're gathering is in, it might even be later than that," said Councilman Dick Smith, who pledged to vote against the Sam's Club plan as written. "We're working on our own information, gathering the data right now. It's really Council taking a good, hard look at this before they make a final decision."

Cavanaugh predicted the issue would be delayed even longer until Sept. 25, the Council's only scheduled meeting in September.

"This will give us time to rethink this thing," he said. "It gives us time to talk with Sam's again like we did yesterday."

Since coming to light, the new Sam's Club construction plans have been under fire from residents of nearby neighborhoods. Carole Carver, who lives in Elmwood Park, says she has a petition with more than 200 signatures opposing the Whiskey Road site.

Responding to the outcry, the Aiken Planning Commission last month recommended that City Council reject the Sam's Club plan.

"This is not an anti-Sam's or Wal-Mart thing at all," Smith said. "It's just that there's a lot of controversy out there about the issue, and as you can tell, I don't think we need to approve any change in the concept plan."

In June 2005, City Council approved a concept plan for Whiskey Station, a 138,600-square-foot shopping center and 6,500-square-foot restaurant, on the now-contested site. The retail plaza and the Kensington subdivision were part of a mixed-used annexation endorsed by the City in August 2003 under Planned Commercial zoning.

However, Smith and others who now oppose the Sam's Club location contend the warehouse store would alter the "intensity" of the property's land use even more than Whiskey Station, which was never developed.

"We had made a decision some time ago that when annexations came into the City, they would be brought in as Planned Commercial because we had latitude as to what we could do with the property," Smith said.

Opponents of the Whiskey Road site suggest that the new Sam's Club could be built on the west side of the City near the Shoppes at Richland, now under construction at the intersection of Richland Avenue and University Parkway; along Pine Log Road near Citizens Park or farther down the Highway 118 by-pass; or even on the north side of the City near Interstate 20.