Longtime readers know I don’t have any particular animus toward Wal-Mart. And if not for two specific aspects to this specific proposal, I’d have to suck it up and limit my complaints to personal inconvenience over traffic. Thing is, we’re less than five miles by freeway from an already-existing, larger store. And the site in question for the new one, is just not suitable for high-impact retail without a huge amount of highly disruptive road construction practically on our doorstep.
There’s also a very busy major railroad line very near the site, which from what I’ve heard makes it simply infeasible to put major retail there.
So, I’m not exactly weeping over this news:
Wal-Mart might not come to Highway 154 near Interstate 85 after all, if the building has to be brick.
The denial by the Coweta County Commission of a variance to allow the Wal-Mart to be built with a Quik Brik exterior, instead of real brick “could very well jeopardize the project for us,“ said Glen Wilkins, Wal-Mart’s senior manager of public affairs for Georgia.
There have been rumors that Wal-Mart was pulling out, because the variance was not granted. Wilkins was asked about those rumors.
“There is a possibility that this project could not go forward,“ Wilkins said.
The reason is the added cost. The cost to clad the building in brick is substantial, both in terms of materials and labor. »
Wal-Mart may not build its new store
Mr. Wilkins sob-stories the requirement by suggesting the loss of his new store will cost us local rubes some much-needed jobs, but then we find out about another store that’s planned for our area:
Sam’s Club has known all along that it will need to be a brick building, said Scott Seymour, developer of Fischer Crossings, the three-corner development at Highway 34 and Fischer in eastern Coweta.
Covenants for the development require brick on any quadrant of the building that faces a road. But the county’s requirements, for the Quality Development Corridor that includes that area, require brick, stone, or glass on all sides.
Wilkins said he was not involved in the Sam’s Club project at all and had no knowledge of its future.
Fischer’s Crossings was a pretty rough intersection before Highway 34 was four-laned through there, but as far as I know it has never had the kind of chronic congestion that 154, still a narrow, winding two-lane road, experiences. It can be impossible to turn left onto 154 from mid-afternoon until well into the dinner hour—thanks to high-school traffic followed quickly by an evening commute from all parts of metro Atlanta.
There are plenty of locations, even in Coweta County, that would be better suited to a second Wal-Mart. I’ve even seen multiple cases of Wal-Marts and Sam’s Clubs right next to each other.
