A developer from Wisconsin has announced that the company is leaving Grandville, Michigan and going back to Wisconsin, abandoning an ill-fated Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club proposal. The developer, AIG Properties, said it was pulling out because there was too much opposition from city officials. In other words, the writing was on the WAL. The withdrawal means that a 195,000 s.f. Wal-Mart supercenter and a 135,000 s.f. Sam’s Club will not be built on 44th. Street in Grandville. That’s just grand with many residents, who opposed the scale of this project since it was proposed in October. According to the Grand Rapids Press, a formal application was never submitted, but during informal discussions, city officials were less than warm to the idea of rezoning industrial property to commercial in order to build a Wal-Mart. Mayor James Buck said that the developer informed him last week that the developer “did not feel there was support” for the Wal-Mart project.
Another Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club bites the dust. If the developer had bothered to carefully read the city’s zoning map, he might have stood a much better chance by locating on land already zoned for commercial use. But some city officials still believe that industrial land should be used for industrial purposes, and that special rezonings solely to suit the needs of Wal-Mart just don’t make sense.
