Former City Councilman Barry Rice said Thursday he will be one of the attorneys helping Wal-Mart navigate city regulations in an attempt to build a new Supercenter along Interstate 35.
Rice said he saw a site plan drawing of the proposed store Thursday.
“I was very impressed with what I saw,” Rice said. “I saw a site plan that I think addresses all the issues of the neighbors and City Council.”
A furor erupted this week when an engineering firm cut a 250-foot swath of trees and vegetation from the bottom up to the top of a ridge of land at 15th Street and I-35. The land leads down to Fox Lake, which is the main water feature of the Fox Lake Addition of 208 homes. Residents fear siltation of Fox Lake will be the result of that action.
The Fox Lake Homeowners Association also has gone to great lengths to prepare for when the more than 100-acre site of commercially zoned land next to them would actually be built upon. The association hired an attorney, their own engineers and an architect who lives in the neighborhood is helping them. They want to be an active part of any planning for what will happen on the land that overlooks their homes, said resident Tom Langdon earlier this week.
Langdon asked Edmond City Council for a moratorium on building in the I-35 Corridor until the new Title 22 zoning ordinance codes are revised by the city. A citizen committee and city officials are about halfway through the process of reviewing Title 22 with a consultant, but the review is expected to take many more months.
While the city was able to convince the Spears & McCaleb engineering firm to stop clearing work this week until they meet with residents, a moratorium is a much more difficult issue. City Planner Bob Schiermeyer said the city has only once in its history enacted a building moratorium. That was 30 years ago when the land was being bought by the federal government to build Arcadia Lake as a recreation site and a source for Edmond’s drinking water, he said.
City officials have not thoroughly discussed imposing a building moratorium at this point.
How would it look?
Rice was one of the authors of the I-35 Corridor guidelines during his two terms as a councilman representing Ward 1. In particular, he helped enact the 15 percent landscaping guideline for the land lining I-35, which is the second-highest landscaping requirement of any zoning category in the city. Most areas are required to have 10 percent landscaping.
Rice also has a record of demanding quality for commercial building projects, and was unafraid to vote “no” on items he felt did not meet the city’s vision. For example, Rice voted “no” on every application related to the site on Second Street where the new SuperTarget and Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse now sit.
So why help represent Wal-Mart when it wants to build in an area of Edmond that is considered almost sacred for its pristine, tree-lined beauty by many residents and city officials alike? Rice said the city needs to continue to build its sales tax base in order to keep providing exemplary services to citizens.
“That’s the best place for a Wal-Mart because of the traffic,” he said. “This is so much easier to get to,” noting that outlying areas such as residents in Guthrie, Luther, Coyle and Langston might visit this Wal-Mart site more readily than the one on Danforth, thereby bringing in more sales tax revenue to the city.
And this application in particular, Rice said, will set the standard for development in the I-35 Corridor.
“They intend to have the nicest Wal-Mart in Oklahoma,” Rice said of company officials.
Rice said his viewing of the plans made him feel comfortable that Wal-Mart will be very proactive in meeting city standards and residents’ concerns on this plan as opposed to the mid-1990s when Wal-Mart built its current Supercenter location on Danforth in west Edmond. The battles at City Council over that site plan are almost legendary, and Rice was one of the councilmen at the time.
Instead of bringing in a plan for the company’s normal, big box look, Rice said this new Supercenter exceeds city requirements and that Wal-Mart officials seem to have anticipated the needs of residents and will protect the watershed.
Rice said the plans show a 100-foot buffer along the west side of the property, which is the side closest to the Fox Lake Addition. Additional buffers will be kept along 15th Street to preserve some of the natural timber there.
Unlike the property at Danforth that required a special use permit for the garden center, Rice said all portions of the proposed Wal-Mart on I-35 will be enclosed in the building.
By doing so, it will meet the guidelines of the E-3 commercial and industrial zoning that is on a portion of the land next to the Braum’s on the corner.
The land owned by the Porter and Rogers families of Enid actually has three zoning categories in place.
The west portion closest to the neighborhood is zoned D-2 neighborhood commercial, which is a zoning category that has been repealed, Schiermeyer said. The zoning is still valid, but no other land in the future will receive a D-2 zoning.
In front of that is an area of E-3 commercial zoning next to 15th Street and the frontage road of I-35. A small strip of land along the front, northeast portion of the property is zoned for F-1 industrial.
So far, no plans for all three zoning categories have been revealed and the Wal-Mart would only work in the E-3 zoning area. No entrance from Fox Lake Lane is planned to the Wal-Mart at this time, meaning most of the traffic to it would enter off the frontage road and 15th Street.
Rice said he already has made some suggestions for the site plan, but that overall, he believes the proposed brick building and other amenities will make a good site plan.
“What Wal-Mart will do is set a standard that other developers will have to follow,” Rice said.
The next step for Wal-Mart will be to show its proposed plans to City Council members individually for their input before applications are actually filed with the city, Rice said.
(Lisa Shearer may be reached via e-mail at lshearer@edmondsun.com.)
