Group takes on big box store

November, 17 2006

By MARY AMES

Frontiersman

WASILLA - The past year has been marked by sleepless nights for Robert Scott, along with what he calls a degradation of his property and a cold shoulder from the city of Wasilla, all things Scott blames on Wal-Mart.

Scott lives on Danny Avenue behind Wal-Mart, in a home he bought in 2001. Last year, Scott objected to Wal-Mart's request for expansion to the Wasilla City Council, and the construction has kept him awake many nights since, he said.

&#8220After waking up to vibrating compactors all summer, a (vehicle) back-up alarm is not so bad anymore,” Scott said.

Scott and another neighbor, Wade Roberts, who has lived on Danny Avenue since before Wal-Mart came to the neighborhood, said they have expended time and energy trying to get Wal-Mart to be a better neighbor. Roberts is president of the Southview Homeowners Planning Association, an organization he said he formed in the early 1990s. Lately, there have been no major issues confronting the association except Wal-Mart, Roberts said.

An October 2005 resolution by the city's planning commission supported a conditional-use permit for the expansion of Wal-Mart.

According to the seventh condition in the resolution, &#8220late night/early morning noise and garbage concerns of adjacent subdivision will be addressed by Wal-Mart and will meet with the city planner's approval.”

Scott said he has called the police many times to try to get middle-of-the-night construction shut down. Flying debris, construction garbage and light pollution from Wal-Mart are constants in his life, he said.

&#8220What it comes down to is that nobody will keep

Wal-Mart in check,” Scott wrote in a recent e-mail. &#8220Nobody will protect the serenity of the adjacent neighborhood.”

Scott and Roberts said they went to Sandra Garley when she was the Wasilla city planner, to Mayor Diane M. Keller, and to Peter Curtis, Wal-Mart's representative at Lounsbury & Associates, they said.

Neither Scott nor Roberts felt their e-mails and calls to the city received satisfactory responses, nor did they get answers at an August meeting with Curtis.

&#8220They keep blowing us off,” Scott said. &#8220And the meeting with Lounsbury was window dressing.”

At an Aug. 14 city council meeting, the mayor mentioned the association's meeting with Curtis. She said the citizens were so rude that Curtis requested all future communications with them be done through the city. Keller said she was disappointed with the residents' behavior.

Curtis would not say what happened at that meeting, and said he couldn't comment on what was a private conversation between him and Keller.

&#8220Apparently, the mayor has an opinion,” he said. &#8220It would be best to follow up with the city.”

Scott and Roberts expressed surprise that the meeting was portrayed that way.

&#8220Wade and myself were far from rude,” Scott said. &#8220We were mild-mannered, and no tempers flared.”

Roberts said when he couldn't get anywhere with the planning staff for months, he gave up.

&#8220Finally I called the mayor,” he said. &#8220She told me we were whining.”

The mayor was at a conference in Juneau this week and did not return a call for comment.

Garley said she did not attend the meeting in question.

However, Garley heard a &#8220very distressing description” of the meeting the next day from Curtis, she said.

Roberts said he was happy to see a Wal-Mart superstore coming, but he wants Wal-Mart to abide by established rules, including completing the 100-foot buffer berm behind the store, as required by the permit.

&#8220I realize Wasilla is small,” he said. &#8220But this is a pretty big issue. They are putting themselves in a position to get sued. So is Wal-Mart.

&#8220They have got to think it through. I'm taken aback by how they ramrodded it in and the city is buying into this.”

Mark Ewing, who has been a council member for two years, said he knows some people who live in the neighborhood. Roberts is an honorable man, Ewing said, someone who doesn't usually complain.

&#8220He just wants them to live up to what they told him they would,” Ewing said. &#8220They've been ignored and lied to by two administrations.”

Council member Steve Menard, who took office a year ago, said he wouldn't comment on the issue because no one has testified about it before the council.

&#8220I've been to every meeting and no one has objected to the expansion of Wal-Mart,” Menard said.