The Domain of Wal-Mart

While attending the recent International Council of Shopping Centers spring convention in Las Vegas two weeks ago, it appears that developers Endeavor Real Estate Group weren't just marketing the Domain, their proposed North Austin urban retail village project. Last week, says Council Member Daryl Slusher, a local developer who also attended the ICSC convention gave him a copy of a flyer distributed there by Endeavor advertising seven retail "pad sites" surrounding the 29-acre site Endeavor is selling to Wal-Mart for a proposed Supercenter. On May 15, Slusher cast the lone vote against a $37 million city tax-rebate package for the Domain, a vote rushed through the council so that Endeavor could go to ICSC with a deal in hand.

Altogether, Endeavor's Wal-Mart tract covers 43 acres at the southwest corner of MoPac and Slaughter Lane, within the Barton Springs Recharge Zone but grandfathered since 1996 with an exemption from the Save Our Springs Ordinance. The pad sites would accommodate, alongside the Supercenter, two banks, four restaurants, and a 7,600-square-foot retail building. To emphasize profit potential, the flyer draws attention to the "tremendous growth" in Southwest Austin over the past decade ("The area's rolling topography and easy access to Downtown have proved great catalysts for residential development") and includes recent demographic and traffic information about the surrounding area. The general message: More cars and houses mean more business for prospective tenants. No mention is made of the city's efforts to steer development off the vulnerable Edwards Aquifer.

Endeavor principal Kirk Rudy says he's "not surprised" that his firm's retailing group was marketing the pad sites, as well as other Endeavor properties, at ICSC. But Slusher regards promoting the Wal-Mart tract as "a conscious decision on Endeavor's part to profit from polluting." During negotiations on the Domain, Slusher emphasized the connection between that development and the Wal-Mart. He asserted that the city was establishing a dangerous precedent by awarding rebates to a developer planning to take advantage of a tract's grandfathered status to build at three times the impervious-cover level permitted under the SOS Ordinance.

Environmentally sound alternatives exist very close to the proposed Supercenter site, Slusher says -- for instance, the HEB center at Brodie and William Cannon, which complies with SOS. "It can be done," he says. "It just takes good corporate citizenship." Endeavor's rush on the Domain, he speculates, was partly intended "to get that deal through before very many people started to figure out just how rotten the overall situation is."

Endeavor has promised to do what it can to make the Wal-Mart eco-friendly. In addition to getting the world's largest retailer to replace its standard blue-and-gray big box for a Hill Country motif, Endeavor principals have agreed to buy $720,000 worth of land over the aquifer to achieve SOS compliance. They estimate this will pay for 103 acres, which seems an unrealistically low price for Southwest real estate, but Rudy, who sits on the board of the Hill Country Conservancy, says he's overheard conversations at meetings about the possibility of buying land or easements at such prices. "I want other stakeholders interested in preserving land to be stewards of that land," he said, reiterating: "We don't have to do anything [to attempt to comply with SOS]."

Endeavor has also promised to hold Wal-Mart's feet to the fire regarding environmental protection -- where, as on other issues, the Beast from Bentonville has been less than exemplary. Wal-Mart is the first national corporation to face federal sanctions for violating storm-water regulations in more than one state. At 17 store construction sites in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts, Wal-Mart and its contractors either failed to obtain required permits, didn't implement pollution control measures, or both -- all breaches of the Clean Water Act. In June 2001, Wal-Mart had to fork over $1 million in fines and agreed to develop an environmental management plan to minimize damage to surrounding watersheds and waterways.

Residents of neighborhoods located near the Wal-Mart site, as well as local environmentalists, are gearing up for a campaign to get the world's largest retailer to consider locating elsewhere. The Supercenter, says New Villages of Western Oaks resident Stephani Stone, "is very scary for our neighborhood, mainly from a traffic standpoint." She and other residents predict the store will become a regional draw, which neighboring streets currently aren't equipped to handle -- particularly in light of other developments in the area, including housing and commercial space proposed by Stratus Properties. And Davis Lane, north of the Wal-Mart site, features two karst preserves. "We've got a Wal-Mart on MoPac, two lights up," Stone says. "We need a dentist or a small restaurant."