Wal-Mart surveys Palmer

PALMER - Is Wal-Mart coming to Palmer?

A civil engineering firm has been surveying a horse field on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, across from the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The firm, Lounsbury and Associates, is the statewide civil engineering contractor for the company.

Wal-Mart's engineers have made some preliminary investigations with both the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities and city engineers, according to Palmer Mayor John Combs.

Eric Berger, Wal-Mart's regional community affairs manager for the Northwest, said he couldn't admit to specific plans to develop in Palmer.

"We continually evaluate communities [to] determine whether there might be locations appropriate to serve our customers," he said.

But the city had a preliminary meeting with Wal-Mart recently to consider a store in the area.

"It's really on the drawing boards," said Sara Jansen, community and economic development director for the city. "We don't have any permits or anything."

Wal-Mart operates seven other stores in Alaska: in Wasilla, Eagle River, Kenai, Kodiak, Fairbanks, and two in Anchorage.

The area seen surveyed lies between Palmer High School and the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, just inside Palmer city limits.

Borough maps list Thelma Estep, Eagle River, as the owner of the three parcels, 17-acre, 3.12-acre, and 3.65-acre parcels in the area. Ronald Elmore, Palmer, owns an adjacent 4.6-acre property.

Palmer would benefit from the additional tax revenue fueled by people shopping inside city limits. Development is inevitable, city officials have been saying; the question is how to get it right.

"We don't need the table saw in the living room," Mayor John Combs said of Palmer's zoning issues.

Julie LeMay's living room is quite near the potential store site. She sympathized with property owners who want to be able to do what they want with their land.

But of living next door to Wal-Mart, she said, "I think it's an atrocious thought."

"I wonder why the heck people can't drive 15 minutes to go to the other Wal-Mart," she said.

Contact Kate Golden at kate.golden@frontiersman.com