At a public hearing July 9, the board turned down the Bentonville, AR-based firm's request for a rezoning of 55 acres at Red Bug Lake and Mikler Roads, just west of the one-million-sf Oviedo Marketplace mall. County commissioners will make the final decision on the project Aug. 12.
Oviedo city commissioners rejected a similar Wal-Mart Supercenter in February 2002 at State Road 426 and Red Bug Lake Road. In June 2002, the county's planning board turned down a developer's request for a shopping center at Red Bug Lake and Mikler Roads, the same location Wal-Mart now is targeting. The project wasn't submitted later to the county commission.
Wal-Mart officials in Arkansas declined comment. But Seminole County planning staffers confirm to GlobeSt.com that Wal-Mart had offered to create noise buffers around its project in a densely populated neighborhood.
However, residents such as Lisa M. DeVore, feel buffers aren't the answer. "There are 382 homes in Tuska Ridge alone that sell between $200,000 and $350,000, and those property values will be directly affected by the potential development of a 200,000-sf-plus Super Wal-Mart directly across the street," DeVore tells GlobeSt.com.
"What makes this so perverse is that Oviedo is not an underserved market--not by any stretch of the imagination," she says. "There is a Target about one-quarter of a mile from this proposed site and it more than adequately servers the area's residents. Not to mention that Wal-Mart has a store just off of Red Bug Lake Road in Casselberry at Lake Howell Road; a Super Wal-Mart on Colonial Drive near Alafaya Trail; and there are two Wal-Mart neighborhood centers within a five-mile radius."
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