The Windsor planning commissioners gave Wal-Mart opponents a first taste of victory this week, as they voted unanimously against locating a supercenter on land between 16th and 17th streets The Commissioners have recommended to the Windsor Town Board that 23 acres next to King Soopers not be rezond from multifamily to commercial use. “This is probably a good location in Wal-Mart’s eyes, but it’s not a good location for the town of Windsor,” Planning Commission Chairman Gale Schick told the Greeley Tribune. The Commissioners students safety was a town priority, because the store is too close to a Windsor school. “We’ve always tried to go with a feathering format where commercial is slowly blended into residential,” Schick said. “The school, to me, is definitely a public safety issue.” But the planners also noted that the Windsor comprehensive and land-use plans did not call for placing a large retailer near two other grocery stores. “I’ve done a lot of wanderings through different cities, and I haven’t found a similar situation where there are three grocery stories that survive harmoniously in a block and half of each other,” Commissioner Paul Ehrlich said. “This is merely the first round,” said a Wal-Mart local consultant. “This is the first step of the public process. The town board will have the final say. Even before we announced this location, there was Wal-Mart opposition. We’ll have to really evaluate if this about location or if this is about Wal-Mart,” Wal-Mart implied they would look elsewhere, adding: “We have other sites like Severance, Mead and Dacono. Whether we still look at Windsor, that’s not a guarantee.” Meanwhile, there was nothing but cheers from Windsor Against the Wall, the citizen’s group fighting the proposed supercenter. The Windsor Town Board will make a final decision on the plan by September.
For other stories of Wal-Mart battles in Colorado, search this Newsflash database by the name of the state.
