About three years ago, on George Griffith Blvd, just past Wal-Mart on James Island, I had to slam on the brakes when an animal ran out into the road in front of me. He stopped, we made eye contact, and I gasped when I realized I was looking at a pretty sizable bobcat, right in the heart of James Island.
I just got off the phone with Amy Fabri, who founded Islanders for Responsible Expansion last week to fight the expansion of the Wal-Mart on Folly Road into a Super Wally.
I was following up on this email we received yesterday afternoon, and wanted to verify that the CCL she refers to was indeed the Coastal Conservation League.
The public opposition to the Wal Mart expansion has been tremendous! We’ve collected over 1,000 signatures since last Wednesday.
Yet Chris Morgan from City Planning is confident that the WM will be built. He maintains it is part of the City’s plan to develop James Island and preserve John’s and Wadmalaw. Morgan calls it the ‘big picture’. I think many residents would be very interested in his BIG PICTURE….
The WM was denied a permit by the Corps of Engineers in 2004 to fill in less than an acre of wetlands. Why is the City and CCL so sure the permit for 3 acres this time is going to be granted??
The only source I’d read for CCL being ’so sure’ was a quote from the League’s Nancy Vinson in Friday’s Post and Courier.
Nancy Vinson, with the Coastal Conservation League, said it will take a grass-roots organization to help fight against the Supercenter, though the proposed location on a commercial strip on Folly Road makes it hard to fight from a land-conservation standpoint. Vinson will meet with Wal-Mart representatives next week about the plans.
The CCL was instrumental in preventing the wetland-fill permit in 2004, and Fabri’s question was ‘Why are they hesitant about fighting it this time around?’
When we talked, she was headed downtown to meet with both Vinson and representatives from Wal-Mart who agreed to a three-way talk.
In any case, IRE has collected nearly 1,000 signatures against the expansion at the petition here. Concerned citizens will meet tonight for a public meeting at the DNR auditorium at the end of Ft. Johnson Road on James Island, at 6:30.
Filling wetlands to build anything is very taboo, let alone a Wal-Mart, and it’s surprising they’d appear to have such an easy permitting process.
Christopher Morgan, director of the city’s planning division, said the area would get a better designed store that may reflect the island’s character since it would have to go before the Design Review Board, which was not required when the current store was built.
My question is ‘Why fight Wal-Mart?’ There’s nothing like the ire that goes up in a small town when Wal-Mart first fingers its way in the door, but this is an expansion of what many folks regard as a pretty crappy Wal-Mart.
It will mean direct competition to other area grocery stores. It will probably facilitate additional development around it. It will mean filling wetlands that are already surrounded by development, but are still substantial enough to support bobcats and their prey. Those are reasons enough to the IRE.
But in that case, why have we heard nothing about the hundreds of new condos going up on Folly Road, like the (‘Preserve on the Clam Farm,’) or the new Wings beach store at Sol Legare Road? These types of developments mean more people, which means Wal-Mart does the math and wants to expand. It’s a cause and effect, and it seems like the “evil Mega-lo-Mart” gets singled out while developers keep dropping cookie-cutter marsh-front town homes without opposition.
