Wal-Mart OK’d despite objections

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004 | 11:22 a.m.

The Clark County Commission approved a controversial new Wal-Mart on county-owned land by McCarran International Airport Wednesday despite the objections of about two dozen opponents, among them neighbors of the planned project and members of at least four different unions.

The commission voted 5-1 to allow the project to go forward. Commissioners who voted for the project, which is slated to also include a Lowe's Home Improvement Store, said they feared that their March approval of a master-lease agreement with local developer Marnell Properties and a 2003 zone change to allow such big retail businesses left them with no legal grounds to deny the proposal.

The March lease approval included a sublease with Wal-Mart, although county officials have suggested that might not be binding.

Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who has opposed Wal-Mart projects in the past, voted against the project. Commissioner Myrna Williams, who also has opposed Wal-Mart, was absent.

In March, the commission's approval of the master lease was included on the "consent" portion of the regular agenda and did not prompt any discussion. When representatives for Marnell and Wal-Mart came before the commission in June to present the design of the store, however, neighbors protested. Commissioners said they did not realize they had approved a Wal-Mart at the site in the earlier vote, and have since changed the procedure to take such leases off the consent agenda.

In June, the commission, led by Commissioner Rory Reid, who represents the area, told the developer to meet with neighbors and try to resolve the complaints raised by opponents of the project. On Wednesday, the redesigned project came back to the commission, along with the opposition.

Among the changes to be paid for by the developer were new traffic lights at Surry Street and Russell Road and Oquendo Road and Eastern Avenue; the relocation of the Wal-Mart from Russell to Patrick Lane, a half-mile south; and the addition of two full-sized soccer or footballs fields on the north side of the 80-acre development, closest to the residential areas north of Russell.

The changes won support from some of the people who had opposed the project in June, but opponents appeared to outnumbered supporters at the commission meeting, and the opponents carried signs accusing the county commission of "secret deals" to allow the big-box Wal-Mart store.

The commission's support for the project prompted angry reactions from the opponents.

Roberta West, a representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 711 in Las Vegas, shouted at Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey after the commissioner said she shops at Wal-Mart and appreciates the store hiring elderly and disabled people.

"Why don't you just get out of that seat?" West asked of the lame-duck commssioner. "You don't belong there."

West worked with former commissioner Erin Kenny to write an ordinance restricting large Wal-Mart stores. The ordinance passed -- Kincaid-Chauncey voted against it -- but was subsequently thrown out by a U.S. District Court.

Kincaid-Chauncey said the reason people were focused on this issue is because of Wal-Mart's opposition to unions in its stores.

"Whether or not Wal-Mart should be union is none of our business," she said, adding that the issue before the commission was a design review on land zoned last year for large retail operations. "If this was anything but a Wal-Mart, it would not be as big an issue as it is."

Developer Marnell Properties has "followed every criteria we have set for them," she said. "They have gone above and beyond to try to appease the neighborhood.

"If we don't approve this, we are going to wind up in court, and we are going to wind up with the original plan," Kincaid-Chauncey said.

Attorney Bill Curran, representing Marnell Properties, told the commission that if the redesigned project was rejected, the company would go back to the earlier design. Along with the design changes, Curran said the developer would pay for crossing guards to help students from the three area schools, Wal-Mart would support the local schools, and other concessions to the neighborhood.

Those changes and concessions won support from people who had originally opposed the project, including Nanette Hilton, a representative of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association for Del Sol High School. She said that pleas to correct traffic problems in the area that threaten school students have gone unanswered by the county and school district.

"The only positive response we have gotten on this issue was from Marnell," she said. "I believe the development will bring the necessary changes to the intersections."

Reid, who has been pressured by opponents on one side and the threat of a lawsuit on the other, said it would be impossible for the commission to make everyone happy.

"It's hard to have everybody agree with every aspect of a project like this," he said. "Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions and we don't always end up with everyone in the room being happy -- I will support this."

The prediction that opponents would not be satisfied was correct. Bill Kean, a former Teamster who lives nearby the planned project, did not believe that the commissioners allowed the lease and sublease for Wal-Mart without knowing the consequences.

"They were disingenuous from the get-go," he said after the approval.

Mary Cooke, who lives a few hundred feet north of the northern edge of the project, was a leader of the opposition. She said the road to the approval still has unanswered questions.

"I think we need an investigation," Cooke said. "I still think it's murky."

She said the proof that the original lease wasn't binding lies in the fact that Marnell Properties and Wal-Mart redesigned the project.

"If there hadn't been something wrong with the process, they wouldn't have changed it," she said.

Cooke said the opponents can take some comfort in knowing they helped force the design changes.

"I do take some solace in that we did gain something from that," Cooke said, "but I don't feel it was on the up and up. I still feel we were playing against a stacked deck."