Residents in Frisco, Texas don’t like the idea of Wal-Mart moving into town, and filed the following report on opposition in their community: “We are a small community called Grayhawk in Frisco TX. We live across a 2 lane road from another city called Little Elm, Texas. Wal-mart has stated that they will either be purchasing a corner that belongs to Frisco, or one that belongs to Little Elm. Either way, it affects our property values. The corners are across from each other! We are in a new development, completely surrounded by houses. We already have a Lowes going in on the opposite corner, in Little Elm, which we knew nothing about until the sign was up “Future home of Lowes.” We were all told when we purchased our homes that the area around the development was zoned “small retail” We don’t know if we should fight to have the stupid store on our corner so that we get the taxes, which is what the mayor says to do…or if we should just pray and let it go. We are organising a group of representatives from each block in the community (this neighborhood will eventually be 2,000 homes, at least that’s the plan, but right now its about 900) and we have a meeting next week. We are getting a lot of people who think that we should just bend over and take it, because they think that you can’t fight the corporate machine. The real issue is that there are TWO corners, one belonging to us, and one belonging to Little Elm. Our Mayor is telling us that we want the Wal-Mart on our corner, because then we have control of it, and that if we don’t get it, he will have to raise our taxes…. So, he is essentially threatening to raise our taxes if we don’t go for this, and our taxes are already scary. The other part of this is that although we do have a home owner association to do this stuff, we do not have control of it, at least not until the developer is done with our land. So, they are no help at all, and we are having to do this on our own. So, there is no budget! This is a HUGE mess!!!”
The homeowners in Frisco, like many other communities where people bought houses, only to have big lot next door turned into a big box development, may end up having to sue the developer and the city for misleading them on what would happen to their neighborhood. A Wal-Mart superstore is a very incompatible neighbor, and there is no way to buffer a superstore from surrounding residential properties. Hundreds of residents will lose value in their largest investment in Frisco, while the Mayor pushes a project of dubious economic value. Frisco gains no “control” over Wal-Mart, nor does Little Elm. The only solution on these two corners is for citizens in both communities to raise legal issues with the scale and location of this property, and to push for the “small retail” that they were promised. For local contacts in Frisco, contact [email protected]
