This Week in Wal-Mart

Northcross neighbors' new strategy of needling council each week about the proposed Wal-Mart coming their way may be paying off, as faulty traffic-impact analyses – and any possible changes they may mean to the Northcross site plan – keep returning for discussion. As we reported last week:

According to an article in the Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal, the traffic draw of 200,000-plus-square-foot supercenters is 5.5 trips per 1,000 square feet, compared to 3.9 trips for smaller stores. Brewster McCracken said that even at a slightly smaller 219,000 square feet (down from 225,000), "under this new data, there's 50 percent more traffic than the bigger store would have had in the old data." By way of comparison, in a follow-up e-mail, McCracken writes, "In the case of the Ben White Super Wal-Mart, in fact it appears the traffic impact is 100% greater, not 50% greater."

Today, McCracken said in the wake of the Ben White numbers, the city would be doing a count at the larger Norwood Wal-Mart, closer in size to the proposed Northcross store, to see if the Ben White numbers were "an aberration." With the traffic count "wildly higher" than expected at Ben White, McCracken said he feared "the ITE Journal is a starting point, not the ceiling."

Oh, and Jennifer Kim said Wal-Mart's "thumbing their nose" at the neighbors. N'yah!