Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Summerlin residents aim to block Wal-Mart

For the last half-decade as homes went up all around it, an 18-acre lot on Sahara Avenue and Hualapai Way remained empty and dusty, providing a convenient backdrop for the occasional lone car for sale, herds of political signs, and in midsummer, sheds hawking fireworks.

Now Wal-Mart wants to erect a 203,000-square-foot supercenter at the site, placing its round-the-clock merchandise and grocery operation into the middle of a neighborhood of joggers and tree-shaded paths undisturbed by storefronts for a half-mile in all directions.

On Wednesday Wal-Mart will make its appeal to the Las Vegas City Council. The company hopes to upend a harshly worded denial delivered by the city Planning Commission in June.

More than 500 residents of Peccole Ranch, the Willows, Stone Ridge and other surrounding neighborhoods are expected to attend the City Council meeting to oppose the project, planned for the northeast corner of Sahara and Hualapai.

Councilwoman Lynette Boggs McDonald, who represents the area, backs the residents. "Wal-Mart has been told 'no' by myself. They've been told 'no' by planning staff. They've been told 'no' unanimously by the Planning Commission. Yet, like the Terminator, they keep coming back.

"They seem to think, 'We're big, bad Wal-Mart and it's our way or no way.' It's an attitude that's alienated me and a lot of other people."

Boggs McDonald, like many residents, is not opposed to commercial development on the site. It's been zoned commercial since 1983, when Peccole Nevada first planned the development of Peccole Ranch.

But Boggs McDonald and residents say they would rather see a strip mall with shops that close at the end of each day. They say the proposed Wal-Mart is too large, that it will create significant traffic hazards and that it would be better suited as part of a commercial corridor served by larger roads.

Not so, says Amy Hill, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart. In the same breath that city staff recommended denial of the project in June, Hill noted, staff members also acknowledged that the project meets or exceeds all minimum planning standards. The parcel is zoned for up to 300,000 square feet of commercial, she said.

"We have felt that the planning staff's recommendation and the commission's denial was very subjective and not objective," Hill said. "The store will be an added benefit for Peccole Ranch. It's the missing piece of retail for the area."

Larry Miller, CEO of Peccole Nevada, which owns the 18-acre parcel, said the proposed Wal-Mart will meet the needs of the area and, in the end, actually create less traffic than a strip mall.

"People up here think, 'I live in Summerlin. I deserve something better,' " Miller said. "But they're going to market to their customers. And if I did a separate grocery store, a home improvement store and a TJ Maxx, I'd have 300,000 square feet of retail, 30 different shops, all with different deliveries. Or you know what? I could do it in less space with one store."

Nancy Jacobsen and her husband, Paul, who live just north of the site in Stone Ridge, remember the relief Wal-Mart brought to the small Iowa town they eventually left for Las Vegas.

"It drove the smaller shops out of business, but it had the best prices on prescriptions," Nancy Jacobsen said. "It had things you could get easily there. They had everything. Crafts, things for the house, stationery items, children's clothes, just any number of things."

But that Wal-Mart was built outside of town, she said. "You don't just plunk it down in a residential area. It doesn't belong here."

Diane Howe, general manager of Peccole Ranch, a development of 4,500 homes, also wants Wal-Mart out. "We pride ourselves on our greenbelts and paseos. We have a Frisbee golf course. We have so many joggers," Howe said. "We're like one happy little city. And like I said, we just don't want Wal-Mart. We'll take anything else."

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