Residents in Aurora, Illinois are organizing their troops to fight off a newly proposed Wal-Mart supercenter that developers say will have a “new look.” Here’s the report Sprawl-Busters received this week about the battle in Aurora: “The land and project that Wal-Mart wants is listed under Staubach Retail. The developer that we are dealing with is Terry King of TMK Development. They have a whole host of lawyers,architects,and landscaper, but there has yet to be one
person from Wal-Mart other than their architects. The Aurora Planning Commission meeting that we attended this week was adjourned at 11:15 p.m. We will resume next Wednesday the 9th at 7:00 p.m. in the City Council Chambers. The Beacon News had no idea about the project. They asked if the Alderwoman knew about it. She was at the meeting but voiced no opinion. I now believe they are trying to fast track this thing through without many people finding out. We have a meeting now scheduled with Abby Schueler, she is our 1st ward alderwoman. The meeting is set for this Monday. It seemed peculiar that she would only ask residents whose property is adjacent to the development to attend. There is a new Wal-Mart that opened in Batavia, the next town to the north. This super Wal-Mart is only 7 miles from the new development. There is also another Super Wal-Mart just opening in Oswego which is about 20 miles away. The developer and his architect are trying to sell the residents all this landscaping, berms, water features, directional lighting, and the new look Wal-Mart store. The big problem is that they are trying to put a 205,000 square foot monster in a residential area. They say there will be little impact to our community, but they are providing 965 parking spaces and 9 retail out lots to go with 922 town homes. This has the potential to snarl traffic to a halt. They say
they will provide $3.5 million to road improvements. In this day and age that is a drop in the bucket. We are planning to put a copy of the letter we got from the Alderwoman into every body’s mailbox this weekend and hope they will show for Monday’s meeting. This thing still has not passed the annexation agreement and rezoning/special use stage as of yet. I think there are a few Commissioners on the Mayoral-appointed board who can see beyond the potential tax revenue increase.” It seems that certain members of the Aurora retail board are all for this project. They state the increase in tax revenue and the influx of jobs to the area are the main highlights of the project. The residents are putting up an excellent fight so far. The sub divisions in the area has homes in the range of $350 K – 600K. The traffic in the area is the biggest concern and I think that the planning commission from the city is very aware of the problems that this project will cause. There is a state-operated road (Butterfield/Route 56) that runs along the southern boarder of the proposed development, and the state of Illinois has no plans to upgrade except for the immediate intersection.”
It seems that residents in Aurora don’t want to look at the “new look” Wal-Mart store, and are asking city officials to take a closer look at what this store really means to their community. For local contacts in Aurora, contact [email protected]
