07/27/1993 Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

A - c?n-fiS R, July 19, 1993 Bethia Kummer ? 4845 Porter Road North Olmsted, OH 44070 Wal-Mart Attn: Mike Nelson, Vice President of Operations 701 South Walton Boulevard ' Bentonville, Arkansas 72716 I understand you have employees whose job it is to find appropriate sites for future Wal-Mart stores. Yet, I appeal to you, at the home office, rather than to Mr. Mike Bingham, here in North Olmsted, Ohio, at our local Planning Commission meeting. I appeal to you because, regardless of the enormous public opposition to a Wal-Mart store at the corner of Lorain and Dover Center Roads in North Olmsted, he seems "hell-bent" on cramming this huge enterprise onto an admittedly small piece of property, placing the store itself one hundred feet from some nice private homes. Th$s is an already congested area, a fact openly stated by Mr. Roger Newberry, your representative through Seymour Weiss and Associates. He seems to think traffic lights, erected at taxpayer expense on narrow residential streets just north of the site, will alleviate additional traffic created on those streets if.Wal-Mart is built there. Mr;. Newberry freely admits this proposed plan on this site is not ideal for a Wal-Mart store. Unfortunately, the only alternative requires additional entrances and exits on a narrow street with private homes and a nursing home i.mmediately north, east and eest of these entrances and exits, and two other narrow residential streets within 50 yards of these entrances and exits as well. North Olmsted recently voted to build a magor four lane road, complete with turn lanes, less than one mile west of this site, to connect two inter- state highways -- I-90 and I-480 -- in order to alleviate traffic on these same residential streets where Wal-Mart now wants to build a huge retail operation! Your proposed store, right in the middle of theee.same streets, is less than one-half mile from two public elementary schools, two parochial elementary schools, and a high school. It is also lees than one-half mile from a community park, with a playground, three baseball diamonds, large soccer fid!lds and a nature trail built just this past sunmer. We were told Mr_ Bingham looked at two other sites in North Olmsted. Both, he claimed, were not available at a.s inexper?sive a pr?ce as this one. We have a Wal-Mart fifteen minutes away in Elyria, and a new store coming to Brooklyn, a twenty minute drive from here. There are numerous other sites available, in wide open spaces, within seconds of driving distance from this Lorain/Dover site. The new four-lane road I mentioned would provide perfect access to such a store. Please insist that Mr. Bingham review additional sites for a future store. By saving a little money for Wal-Mart, should a store be built at the Lorain/Dover intersectmnn, you will decrease the property value of hundreds of surrounding homes, many of which will have your enormous store a meEe hundred feet from their yards. You will endanger the now safe areas where hundreds of children play and walk to school. You will stop up traffic along three narrow residential streets which already suffer. You will force.our city -- the taxpayers -- to put up traffic lights and possibly widen these redidential streets, just to make way for your store which could sit comfortably, with no shortage of business, just a mile or two down the road.