Neighbors mobilizing against proposed Walmart in Northern Vanderburgh County

Walmart Real Estate Business Trust has applied for a zoning variance to build on 31 acres at the northwest corner of East Boonville-New Harmony Road and State Road 57. The development would include a gas station and four outlots of the type commonly used by other businesses, such as restaurants and banks, not attached to the primary business.

That’s way too much for Brenda Mobley, an East Boonville-New Harmony Road resident who revels in the area’s rural aesthetic. Mobley said the very idea of a Walmart yards away from her home is horrifying.

“It’s over the top crazy,” said Mobley, who has lived in her house for nine years. “I think that’s too big. I think it’s too much. It’s too much traffic. I think the gas station is going to be too many fumes.”

Mobley brandished a notepad bearing about 30 signatures of like-minded neighbors, which she said she had collected over less than a day of scattershot door knocking. She is certain collecting more will not be a problem.

Neighbors who spoke to the Courier & Press Thursday said they are mobilizing as well to attend a July 17 public hearing of the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Board of Zoning Appeals. In one of the earliest steps in Walmart’s path to final approval of the project, the board will hear requests for variances to requirements of Vanderburgh County’s zoning ordinance.

The public hearing is set for 4 p.m. in Room 301 of the Civic Center. The board typically votes on such applications in the same meeting in which public hearings are held.

Some Evansville real estate professionals aren’t surprised, though, that Walmart wants to build a Superstore near residential growth on the city’s North Side.

“Walmart likes to build close to rooftops, as it looks for new customers,” said Dave Matthews, a real estate appraiser and consultant and owner/operator of David Matthews Associates.

Matthews said the new North Middle School and High School nearby on U.S. 41 will also bring new customers.

He predicted a Supercenter on that site, near major thoroughfares, will be a magnet.

Greg Wathen, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana, credited Walmart for its painstaking planning.

“What is interesting is Walmart determines an area’s exact residential growth and potential for new customers before building,” Wathen said.“Walmart is especially careful about where it places a new store. It doesn’t want to cannibalize another Walmart in the community.”

Wathen said it will be interesting to see how traffic problems are resolved at the busy Boonville-New Harmony Road and Indiana 57 site.

Walmart is in the process of purchasing the 31 acres from Jerry A. Lamb Jr., a commercial real estate associate with Hahn Realty Corp.

Gene Hahn, owner of Hahn Realty Corp., noted the site selected had been zoned C-4 (commercial) for a number of years.

Mobley and several of her neighbors said they knew the land Walmart wants to buy was rezoned for commercial use in the 1990s.

“But we just really thought that it would be something more community-friendly than a Walmart,” Mobley said, citing a school, a park, even offices as alternatives.

“You know — something that didn’t draw so much ongoing in-and-out traffic, in-and-out traffic,” she said.

As Mobley spoke, Highway 57 resident Barbara Markwell nodded in agreement.

“We thought we were going to be out in the country. We didn’t know the town was moving in to us,” said Markwell, an area resident for 35 years.

Mobley and Markwell’s remarks were supported Thursday by residents who spoke to the Courier & Press but who said they did want to do so publicly, and by calls to the newspaper.

Philip Lumagui moved with his fiancé and her two children to East Boonville-New Harmony Road from Baseline Road just two-and-a-half months ago. Why? To get away from traffic associated with North High School.

Now this.

“We all live out here to be away from all this, to be away from the developments and to have a different quality of life,” Lumagui said. “Quite frankly, how many Walmarts do we need?”

Lumagui doesn’t want to move again. He wants to fight.

“I don’t see a reason for them to build out there when there are better building areas,” he said, practically spitting out the words.

The fight likely is just beginning.

Approval of the Walmart project does not hinge on Thursday’s public hearing. In fact, the Board of Zoning Appeals hearing is one of the first steps necessary for overall approval of the project. Walmart seeks variances to requirements of the county’s zoning ordinance to:

• Allow fewer parking spaces than otherwise allowed for the size of the project. That could leave more room for the proposed gas station, outlots and landscaping. Walmart’s application proposes 758 parking spaces and “approximately 186,933 square feet of gross floor area” for the new development.
• Allow more Walmart signs than allowed and larger signs than allowed; and
• Allow fewer landscaped islands in the parking lot than the zoning ordinance requires.

The Board of Zoning Appeals could ask Walmart to return to a subsequent meeting with a revised proposal, or it could vote to approve or deny the zoning variance requests Thursday. If the board denies Walmart, the zoning code stipulates that the company could not try again for at least a year, but board members could waive that stipulation.

If the variances are approved, Walmart would still have to obtain an array of local and state approvals.

Among other things, the company would have to get approval of its overall site plan by a committee of city and county building, engineering, surveying and water and sewer officials. The Area Plan Commission would have to give Walmart a zoning use permit finding, in essence, that its plan complies with zoning and development standards. Walmart also would need a building permit from the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Building Commission.

Mobley vows to fight Walmart every step of the way.

“We’re in the country. We want to stay country,” she said.