Wal-Mart Runup: Annex Community Room 1 Site of Feb. 13 Airing

GROTON–The Feb. 13, 2007, Planning Commission meeting on Wal-Mart’s proposed super store near the Groton reservoir system is scheduled to take place in Community Room 1 of the Town Hall Annex, a staff member of the Office of Planning and Development Services said Jan. 29, 2007.

The OPDS employee said the site had been chosen a few days earlier. The meeting originally was scheduled for Community Room 2, where the previous airing of the project started on Jan. 9. That session had to be moved to the larger Community Room 1, where the Town Council normally meets, because of an overflow crowd.

At the Planning Commission’s Jan. 23 meeting, the minutes of the preceding meeting were corrected. The correction, requested by Commission Member Ray Munn, added the missing information that Mr. Munn had asked that the Wal-Mart plan be referred to the town’s Conservation Commission.

GOSA Director Sidney Van Zandt appeared at the Jan. 23 hearing and asked the Commission to vote that evening on GOSA’s request for hiring of outside experts in water and traffic to evaluate the project. Shortly before Ms. Van Zandt spoke, Diane Whitney, attorney for Konover, the developer behind the Wal-Mart project, said she had heard that some individuals planned to make a presentation concerning Wal-Mart at the meeting. She asked that no presentation be made ahead of the scheduled airing Feb. 13. Nonetheless, Ms. Van Zandt was allowed to speak briefly and to distribute a statement emphasizing the need for independent outside expertise.

The public airing of the Wal-Mart project is not classified as a formal hearing. As originally presented, the Wal-Mart project was a subdivision, which would have required a formal hearing and subjected the project to other stipulations of the subdivision regulations. However, the project had morphed by the time it reached the Planning Commission. It henceforth would reduce, rather than add to, the number of land parcels involved. That change allowed it to be classified as a “site plan” not covered by subdivision regulations. The application to the Inland Wetlands Agency did not identify Wal-Mart as the retail development involved.

Wal-Mart, it has been learned, has sent glossy flyers to at least some Groton residents inviting them to mail in a post card offering to write letters or attend a meeting in support of the project. The flyer claims the project would add 150 jobs in Groton. It does not give the numbers of jobs that would be extinguished in supermarkets that would be squeezed by price competition from Wal-Mart, which possesses enormous power over its suppliers. Hence, the 150 does not appear to be a net figure. The flyer says the average wage of a full-time associate in Connecticut is $11.24 an hour, but does not say what percentage of the non-union company’s work force would be full-time employees with that pay level. It did not say what percentage of employees would have health insurance.

Environmental Impact | January 29, 2007