Adjacent Wal-Marts May Dodge Size Curbs
Calvert Had Stopped Supercenter Plans
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 7, 2005; Page B01
Robin Gottlieb cringed when she learned of Wal-Mart's plans to build a store the size of three football fields near her home in Dunkirk, a cozy hamlet in Southern Maryland ringed by rolling tobacco fields. The 44-year-old librarian feared it would overwhelm her tightknit community and usher in even more development.
After intense lobbying from Gottlieb and her neighbors, Calvert County officials passed tough regulations last summer that limited the size of big-box stores in quaint town centers such as Dunkirk's. Gottlieb and her friends arranged to cheer the victory with celebratory drinks.
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But Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, appears to have hit upon a novel way around the rules: divide the store in two.
In what company officials are calling one of the first arrangements of its kind in the country, Wal-Mart plans to build a 74,998-square-foot store cheek by jowl with a 22,689-square-foot garden center. The two Wal-Marts -- each with its own entrance, utilities, bathrooms and cash registers -- would have a combined area 30 percent larger than the 75,000-square-foot limit for a single store in Dunkirk.
The tactic is the latest example of Wal-Mart's increasingly creative responses to the scores of jurisdictions, including Prince William and Montgomery counties, that have passed regulations limiting the size and location of big-box stores.
"It almost points out the futility of municipalities developing ordinances and laws that restrict the size of stores," said Kenneth E. Stone, professor emeritus of economics at Iowa State University, who has studied the company for 20 years. "There's always a way around them, and an outfit as big and smart as Wal-Mart will think of a way."
Mia Masten, community affairs manager for Wal-Mart's eastern region, said she believed the Dunkirk site would be the first time the Bentonville, Ark., company will build two side-by-side stores in response to size restrictions. It is a strategy that Wal-Mart is likely to consider in other areas, she said.
"As these big-box bills come up, all retailers will just have to be flexible," she said. "In this case, we developed a model that allowed us to reach our customers."
Wal-Mart has two dozen stores in the Washington region, all of them outside the Capital Beltway. Some communities, including the District, are courting the retailer for the jobs and tax revenue the giant store could bring.
But in this hamlet in Calvert, a narrow peninsula on the Chesapeake Bay, residents are incensed at what they consider Wal-Mart's blatant disregard for their wishes.
"They're like a slippery eel that won't be pinned down," said Gottlieb, a leader of Calvert Neighbors for Sensible Growth, which lobbied for the big-box ordinance and now is fighting Wal-Mart's newest proposal. "But we can't let them get away with this. It makes a mockery of our county."
Wal-Mart officials say there is nothing Calvert can do to prevent construction of the stores. Mark Davis, a lawyer for Charlotte-based Faison Enterprises, which is developing the Wal-Mart site, said the county can regulate only the size and nature of buildings. He said it would be illegal and discriminatory to create laws that regulate the owners of specific buildings.
Still, the county commissioners said Wal-Mart's plan violates the intent of the regulations. Last month, they asked the planning board to delay any action on the Dunkirk plan so the county attorney can evaluate possible options to stop the stores.
Calvert is hardly the first jurisdiction to try to block Wal-Mart from building in its community. Opposition to the company has mounted as organized labor -- increasingly threatened by non-unionized Wal-Mart's entry into the food sector -- has joined with preservationists and small-business owners to keep the retailer at bay.
Last month, plans for the first Wal-Mart in New York were scrapped after intense opposition from several City Council members and congressional representatives. In November, Montgomery passed tough zoning regulations on big-box stores. Prince William set a maximum size for stores last April. Alexandria requires special permission for retail outlets larger than 20,000 square feet.
Wal-Mart has grown increasingly resilient when faced with such restrictions. In Inglewood, Calif., the company tried to circumvent the City Council's rejection of its 130,000-square-foot superstore by putting a measure before voters that would have exempted the company from the city's zoning and environmental laws. It was rejected last April by 60 percent of voters.
In Tampa last year, Wal-Mart opened a 99,000-square-foot Supercenter prototype designed to come in just below the 100,000-square-foot size caps imposed by cities and counties across the country.
Masten concedes that splitting a store into side-by-side parts may not be the most cost-effective or consumer-friendly design, but she said it is the best way to serve Dunkirk customers in light of the regulations. "This makes more sense than having the general merchandise store on one side of town and the garden center on the other side," she said.
Opponents charge that Wal-Mart is concerned less with customers than with a profit-centered approach that disregards community desires.
"They will try any tactic that they think they can get away with," said Al Norman, 58, founder of Sprawl-Busters, a Massachusetts-based group that helps communities fight big-box stores. "I've adopted the attitude with Wal-Mart that having a clear intent in your ordinances doesn't mean anything with them."
The tenacity of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in its march across the American landscape has helped make it the nation's biggest company. The retailer, which rang up more than $288 billion in sales last year, has 1,353 regular Wal-Mart stores in the United States and 1,713 Supercenters, which sell grocery items.
In Calvert, a once-rural outpost transforming into a bustling bedroom community, there is widespread fear that a Wal-Mart in Dunkirk could shatter the county's quiet. Residents worry that the store would draw shoppers from neighboring Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties, further clogging the county's only major highway and turning Calvert into a bustling retail hub for the region.
Gottlieb said she worries that Wal-Mart will continue adding stores to its Dunkirk complex. "Wal-Mart will no doubt continue adding 'modules,' until they have the auto repair center and food store they'd originally planned, and Calvert County will have a sprawling, ugly, megaplex of 'Wadules,' " she wrote in a letter to the county commissioners.
About 50 members of Calvert Neighbors for Sensible Growth turned up Feb. 23 at the planning board's usually sparse meeting. Clutching handmade signs with such messages as "Rules are rules!!" they urged the board not to allow Wal-Mart to sidestep the regulations.
Yvonne Remz, 49, who moved to Dunkirk three years ago, testified that her hometown of St. Mary's, Pa., had been devastated since the opening of a Wal-Mart. Family friends lost jobs, small businesses closed and the social fabric of her community began to fray, she said.
"I don't have a downtown St. Mary's anymore," she said with a slight break in her voice.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation highlighted the threat big-box retailers pose for rural areas when it placed the state of Vermont on its annual list of endangered sites last year. The group said stores such as Wal-Mart drain tightknit communities of their unique character and contribute to the homogenization of American life.
That's why Cornelia Poudrier, the founder of Calvert Neighbors for Sensible Growth, said she would work relentlessly to keep Wal-Mart from exploiting the apparent loophole in the county regulations.
"This could ruin the county forever," she said. "We're fighting to preserve our way of life."
