The Zionsville, Indiana Planning Commission this week dealt Wal-Mart a setback — at least temporarily. The Commission voted not to rezone 12 acres of land. The developer, Heritage RDG, was seeking a “general business” rezoning, but says they can still build a Wal-Mart supercenter on the remaining land they control. “It makes it more difficult, but it doesn’t affect our amended proposal,” a lawyer for the developer told the Indianapolis Star. The Wal-Mart will be scaled back from 204,000 s.f. to 176,000 s.f. “Our hope is that the (Plan) Commission would stay the course,” said Richard Carr, president of the Zionsville Merchants Association. “If you look around, you can see that the retail environment is very adequate to meet our needs.” Local residents in Zionsville filed the following report with Sprawl-Busters: “It’s been just over a month since I’ve contacted you about a Wal-Mart Supercenter, whose developers were trying to rezone a portion of the land that theyintended to develop as a part of this Wal-Mart and several outlots. I am happy to report that the opposition has won the first battle in this war. Our planningcommission has denied the rezoning, which still leaves the developer with a large commercially zoned lot. But now it’s not big enough to built any outlots. We now have the toughest battle ahead of us, making sure they still don’t build on the remainingland! Several members of our town council members have been vocal about not wanting this development and are now simply looking for a reason to turn Wal-Mart away without a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Our opposition troops have begun to look to other towns who have beat Wal-Mart even when the zoning is right. We’re riding high on our first little victory, but everyone knows that Wal-Mart won’t back down this easily.”
Just because land is commercially zoned, does not mean that a project which is too intense for the parcel gets an automatic approval. Traffic, impacts on surrounding properties, consistency with the Comprehensive Plan — many issues can still be raised. For local contacts in Zionsville, contact [email protected]
