Wal-Mart reps meet with Olesen Road property owners
By Linda Bentley | April 29, 2009
Wal-Mart Open House: 6 p.m. on May 6 at Black Mountain Baptist Church
CAVE CREEK – Residential property owners along the south side of Olesen Road between Cave Creek Road and 56th Street met with Wal-Mart Attorney Sean Lake and Engineer Brian Gillis on Tuesday to discuss the company’s plans to build a 24-hour Supercenter across the road from them.
Lake and Gillis said Wal-Mart was working on the site plan and brought what they called a first draft, which the town’s planning department had not even seen yet. They emphasized it was only a draft intended to give them something to look at as they discussed the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter, which Lake said will be about 128,000 square feet. For perspective, that is roughly 40 percent smaller than the Scottsdale Airpark and Anthem Supercenters and about 5 percent smaller than Lowe’s in Carefree.
The site plan shows the building situated 165 feet north of Wal-Mart’s southern property line, leaving a large buffer area that could be filled in with plants removed from other areas of the parcel.
A neighborhood meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 6 at Black Mountain Baptist Church, 33955 N. Cave Creek Road, and notices have been sent to property owners within 1,200 feet. However, Lake said they wanted to meet with the Olesen Road neighbors first, as they would be the most directly impacted. He said architectural drawings should be available for next week’s meeting.
After the meeting, Maurie Widdows, one of the Olesen Road residents, said he recalled reading somewhere Wal-Mart had discontinued carrying firearms and noted the Wal-Mart on Tatum and Bell roads had converted the area where it used to carry firearms and ammunition into a paint department.
Lake said Wal-Mart has discontinued selling firearms in some of its stores but indicated it was based on sales at individual stores.
Photo: Wal-Mart Attorney Sean Lake (from left) and Engineer Brian Gillis are pictured with Dean Phillips, one of four Olesen Road property owners who attended Tuesday’s meeting to discuss various aspects of the proposed 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter across the road from their homes and residentially zoned property.
Photo by Linda Bentley