Wal-Mart won’t take “no” for an answer. But the city may keep saying it.

The retailer this week applied for permission to build a 132,000-square-foot store at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive, despite two city rejections of larger proposed stores for the site.

This time, however, Wal-Mart won’t seek rezonings or development plan approval for the project.

Instead, the store is applying to build under the terms of zoning and plans approved nearly two years ago — when officials expected that a Home Depot or Lowe’s would be built on the site.

Unlike zonings and plan approval, the building permit process isn’t typically subject to public or Lawrence City Commission review.

Wal-Mart’s Lawrence attorney, Todd Thompson, said he expected the city to approve the building permit.

“Why wouldn’t they?” Thompson said.

But City Commissioner Sue Hack said Friday that the commission rejected Wal-Mart’s last attempt, in March, in a manner that prevents it and similar stores from building at the location.

The commission “pretty much nailed down the issue of a variety store not being acceptable in that location,” Hack said. “I think that still holds true.”

The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission in October 2001 approved plans for a home improvement store at Sixth and Wakarusa, with the proviso that the site never be used for a department store.

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When Wal-Mart came forward with its proposal, however, city planners said the retailer wasn’t a “department store” under city rules — it was a “variety store.” Thus, officials reasoned, Wal-Mart is exempt from the prohibition.

But Myles Schachter, the planning commissioner who proposed the department store ban on the site, said Friday he meant for Wal-Mart and similar stores to be included.

“I was thinking department stores and general merchandise stores, like Wal-Mart,” he said. “The emphasis of the applicant (then) was for a home improvement store.”

The City Commission agreed. As part of its March rejection of Wal-Mart’s plans, the commission adopted the following “finding of fact”:

“Wal-Mart is a general merchandising store, of which both department and variety stores are sub-categories, and the intent of the restriction … was that it should apply to other general merchandise stores as well,” the document says.

Thompson said Friday he was unaware the commission had taken that stance.

“No one has communicated with us anything to that effect,” he said.

Assistant City Manager Dave Corliss said Friday that consideration of the building permit application — including an unusual review by the city’s legal staff — will take several weeks.

In the meantime, west Lawrence residents who mobilized against the two previous Wal-Mart proposals say they will keep fighting.

“Well, we’ll just gear up again,” said Jeanne Newman, who led a petition drive against proposals. “We were hoping this wasn’t going to happen.”