Wal-Mart says it wants to build a new store in town, setting off a battle among residents.

On one side are those who say the store will generate too much traffic, hurt neighborhoods and perhaps even run other local businesses out of town.

On the other side are those who say the store will bring much-needed jobs and sales-tax revenue to town.

Lawrence? Well, yes. And no.

In just the past week, that short description could apply to Peoria, Ariz.; Plainfield, Ill.; Oregon City, Ore.; Minster, Mass.; and a host of other towns across the country.

Type “Wal-Mart” into the Google Internet search engine, and it’s easy to tell that the nation’s largest retailer is getting even larger. It’s also easy to tell that Wal-Mart often runs into opposition when it tries to do so.

“The movement against Wal-Mart is stronger than ever,” Al Norman said last week.

He should know. Norman is the founder of Sprawl-Busters, a national clearinghouse that has been tracking and advising opposition to Wal-Mart and other “big box” stores for a decade.

That means Lawrence, which is fighting a lawsuit over its decision to deny building permits for a 132,000-square-foot Wal-Mart store and related restaurant at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive, is just another battleground in a national war.

Lawrence is not alone in opposing the building of another Wal-Mart in town, but the form the opposition has taken has been dubbed very

A shadow

Not that it seems to slow down the retailer. Keith Morris, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said 250 people showed up this week for the grand opening of an Ashland, Va., store that was delayed by opposition for more than four years.

“Even when there’s opposition,” Morris said, “we still do well.”

An anecdotal reading suggests Wal-Mart wins many of its battles over the long haul. But Norman said opponents have claimed some victories.

“I’ve seen cases where the citizens can be as ornery as Wal-Mart. I’ve seen cases that have gone on 10 years,” Norman said. “It’s not easy to beat a big corporation.”

There is plenty of opposition, however.

“At this point, all it takes is a shadow of a Wal-Mart to stir up opponents,” Norman said.

Morris said part of the reason for opposition was that Wal-Mart — the No. 1 company on the Fortune 500, with sales totaling an estimated 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product — is just the biggest target.

But, Morris said, the retailer has run into a different form of opposition in Lawrence than it has elsewhere.

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“This one, even more so than the others, is very unique,” he said.

That’s because the city went from classifying Wal-Mart as a variety store, allowed at the site, to a department store, which is prohibited.

“I don’t know of other cases where we’ve gone through the entire process and done what we’re supposed to do and have the ordinances changed midway through the process,” Wal-Mart’s Morris said.

City officials are no longer commenting about the matter, citing the lawsuit. But Mayor David Dunfield said in a public meeting last month that commissioners always understood Wal-Mart to be a department store and made it clear when they rejected a requested rezoning for the store in March.

Legitimate concerns

Morris says Wal-Mart believes there are “legitimate concerns” that arise when the retailer plans a new store.

Those concerns are most often raised by neighbors, he said, who worry about what a major commercial development would mean for their neighborhoods.

“If you were a homeowner living next to a 20-acre site, you want to make sure it is developed properly,” Morris said.

In those cases, he said, the company tried to respond by “buffering” the store from the neighborhood, and by making the building more aesthetically appealing — perhaps by using brick facades and wrought-iron fencing. Those adornments were offered by the retailer early in its attempt to get approval to build at Sixth and Wakarusa.

But Morris suggested the company viewed other concerns — such as that Wal-Mart would negatively affect other businesses in a town — as less legitimate.

“A lot of times (other businesses) get involved because they don’t want to compete with another new entity, whether it be Wal-Mart or Target or whatever,” he said.

Norman disagreed that such concerns were not legitimate. He called the retailer a “weapon of retail destruction.”

Much of Wal-Mart’s expansion, Norman said, “is not about need. It’s about market share.”

Differences

Both types of concerns — neighborhood and business — helped create the current battle in Lawrence.

West Lawrence neighborhood residents led the charge against Wal-Mart’s proposals, saying they feared increased traffic on their streets and near Free State High School.

But the city based its denial of the building permits on a standing prohibition of “department stores” at the site. That prohibition was introduced nearly two years ago by Planning Commissioner Myles Schachter, precisely because he didn’t want stores on that site competing with businesses in downtown Lawrence.

Norman said the retailer was trying to bite off more than it should chew.

“I think the issue is scale and intensity of use,” he said. “I bet the people in Lawrence would not be raising a fuss if Wal-Mart said it was opening a neighborhood center at 40,000 square feet.”

In the end, Morris said, Wal-Mart’s astounding growth over four decades was what created opposition.

“You go on one of those (Internet) search engines, you can’t find less than 30 hits for Wal-Mart every day,” he said. “We’re in the news every day.”

The local battle will continue at least another month. A two-day hearing on the lawsuit in Douglas County District Court begins July 17.