City renews Wal-Mart stance

The city is sticking to its guns in opposition to a proposed Wal-Mart store at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive.

In documents filed Friday with the Board of Zoning Appeals, city officials said they stood by their reason for denying building permits for the project: Wal-Mart is a department store prohibited by the site’s zoning.

“It is clear that a modern-day Wal-Mart sells many and varied high-value products as televisions, computers, cameras, lawnmowers, and home and office furniture, and countless others,” said the documents, whose author was unidentified.

The documents were filed in anticipation of an Oct. 2 Board of Zoning Appeals hearing on the issue. 6Wak Land Investments LLC — a partnership of developers Bill Newsome and Doug Compton — has appealed the building permit denial.

Newsome said Friday he hadn’t seen the city documents and would not comment.

The appeals were filed in August, a week after Neighborhood Resources Director Victor Torres formally rejected the permits. He did so upon the order of Douglas County District Judge Michael Malone, who ruled at the beginning of this month the city never gave a proper response when it withheld the requested permits in May.

The companies filed separate lawsuits this spring after officials in May refused to grant the permits and the City Commission ordered a building moratorium for the site.

In their appeal to the Board of Zoning Appeals, Wal-Mart and 6Wak said Torres failed to state specific reasons for the rejections.

City officials said the restaurant was part of the same plan under which a 132,000-square-foot Wal-Mart also would be built. Wal-Mart, they said, is a department store and thus prohibited from the site by zoning rules. 6Wak said Wal-Mart should be classified as a “variety store,” which would be allowed.