July 14, 2004

Mission Wal-Mart faces city zoning hurdles

Rob Roberts
Staff Writer

Current and pending zoning restrictions in Mission could make it challenging for Wal-Mart to proceed with plans to redevelop the 350,000-square-foot Mission Center mall as a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

John Bisio, a spokesman at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, confirmed last week that the retailer had a contract to buy the Mission Center mall, at the intersection of Roe Avenue, Shawnee Mission Parkway and Johnson Drive.

Bisio said that buying the mall was part of a plan to close the nearby Wal-Mart Discount Store in Roeland Park and better serve northeast Johnson County with a Supercenter in Mission.

"We hope to be open there by mid-2006," Bisio said.

But plans for a new Supercenter -- or anything else, for that matter -- can't even be filed for at least 90 days. By that time, it's possible that the Mission City Council could enact a ban on big-box retail stores in the East Gateway District where the mall sits, a city official said.

Community Development Officer Martin Rivarola said Mission has placed a moratorium on all new zoning and development plans pending Planning Commission and City Council action on several proposed zoning amendments. The commission will take up the amendments on Aug. 9.

One calls for the city to "adopt regulations on size and scale of large, single-operator discount stores, more commonly referred to as 'big-box' stores."

HyettPalma, a downtown revitalization consultant, recommended in a 2002 report commissioned by Mission that big-box stores, generally considered to be more than 100,000 or 150,000 square feet, be excluded from the East Gateway District, Rivarola said.

Acting on that recommendation in 2003, Rivarola said, the city amended its comprehensive plan to call for the Mission Center site, if ever redeveloped, to be transformed into a mixed-use development, blending retail, office and/or residential users.

Thus, even if the City Council does not ban big boxes in the East Gateway area, Mission City Administrator Mike Scanlon said, Wal-Mart might have to get creative to get a Supercenter approved on the mall site.

Scanlon said the retailer could either retrofit the mall site, which Bisio said would be unprecedented for Wal-Mart, or build the Supercenter on two or more levels, making room for other, mixed uses on the site.

"They're smart enough to figure out how to make it comply," Scanlon said of Wal-Mart. "They could break it in four separate stores and do some mixed-use development besides."

Scanlon wouldn't say whether that was an option discussed by an engineer he met with this week about redevelopment issues.

In requesting the meeting, Scanlon said, the engineer told him he wanted to talk about the mall site.

"But he said he can't tell me who he represents," Scanlon said, laughing.

Although Bisio confirmed Wal-Mart's purchase contract last week, Copaken White & Blitt, developers of the mall, have declined to comment on Wal-Mart's involvement.

http://kansascity.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2004/07/12/daily20.html

© 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.

 

Fair Use Notice
This site occasionally reprints copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of issues and to highlight the accomplishments of our affiliates. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is available without profit. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

---