Planners may vote on Wal-Mart next month
Foe urges study of economic impact
NORTH TONAWANDA — The Planning Commission may be ready to vote on the site plan for the Wal- Mart supercenter as soon as Aug. 4, Chairman Gary Przewozny said Monday.
More trees on the site and improved pedestrian access were the main suggestions board members made to Wal-Mart’s representatives during a review session Monday.
Meanwhile, opponents of the plan had their say after the meeting, which did not include a public comment opportunity.
Independent grocer Frank Budwey renewed his call for the city to conduct an economic impact study of the supercenter, which he’s concerned may endanger locally owned businesses, including his own.
He also said Wal-Mart’s traffic studies are incomplete because they don’t take into account residential streets he said will be used as shortcuts by drivers seeking to avoid congestion on Niagara Falls Boulevard.
“They don’t show the Wurlitzer extension, which is going to be a disaster for Martinsville,” Budwey said.
The store, combining a supermarket with a discount store, will have entrance roads from Niagara Falls Boulevard and Wurlitzer Drive, with no access from Erie Avenue or other streets in the vicinity.
Jim Missall, president of Friends for Melody Fair, approached the board after adjournment with Buffalo historic preservation attorney Richard Berger, who said the closed theater-in-the-round can be preserved without interfering much with Wal-Mart’s plan.
“We think the Wurlitzer complex and Melody Fair are an important part of America’s musical heritage,”
Berger said. “Melody Fair only takes up 37 spaces on the corner of their parking lot. They have a lot of extra land.”
Asked if the supercenter can be built without demolishing the old theater, Wal-Mart attorney Mark Romanowski said, “I think it would be very difficult.”
Missall said he’d like to remove all the seats from the lower bowl of the theater to create a dinner theater. Przewozny said no plans to do that have been submitted.
Wal-Mart’s plan calls for a 185,312-square-foot building with 961 parking spaces, said Dennis Kennelly of FRA Engineering, Wal-Mart’s Henriettabased consultant.
The exterior walls would be done in four different shades of brown, with beige trim over the three entrances to the building.
Architect Jim Nichols of Bergmann Associates said the facade will incorporate design motifs from the nearby Wurlitzer building.
Budwey said, “The building looks really beautiful.”
But he said the city should take him up on his offer to pay for a study of the impact of the store on the business community, and the city’s own costs.
“I’d have to forget this whole thing if it’s a plus,” Budwey said. “If [the cost] is a minimal amount of dollars, it’s probably all right.”
Much of the board’s discussion was about trees. Wal-Mart is required by city code to provide shade for 30 percent of the parking lot, but its plan calls for shading only 20 percent, and most of that would be concentrated along the Niagara Falls Boulevard entrance.
“That’s nine acres of asphalt,” board member Joy Kuebler said.
She and colleague David Conti urged breaking up the expanse of pavement with more interspersed plantings.
Romanowski said Wal-Mart is prepared to seek a variance if need be. He said its plan calls for planting 329 trees. The terms of the city code call for 434 trees, or one for every 1,000 square feet of landscaped area, but Romanowski said to comply with that, Wal-Mart would have to cut down existing trees and plant replacements.
“We think that’s silly,” he said, and Przewozny said the board would probably allow Wal-Mart not to have to do that.
Another variance involves parking spaces. The city requires 10 spaces per 1,000 square feet of building area, which, for this project, would mean 1,853 spaces. Wal-Mart proposes about half that.
