Lebanon Daily News

No means no

Sunday, February 06, 2005 -

The public has certainly sent a resounding message to Wal-Mart and to the North Cornwall Township supervisors: No!

There can be no doubt the recipients got the message. What remains to be seen is whether they care.

More than 200 people took Thursday off from their jobs or whatever else they would have been doing to attend a conditional-use hearing on whether to allow Wal-Mart to build a giant superstore on a tract of farmland on the west side of Cornwall Road that stretches to the back of the Cedar Crest Square shopping center.

That so many people came out on a weekday to be heard speaks volumes for the community-mindedness of the residents not just of North Cornwall Township but also of Lebanon, Cornwall, West Cornwall and South Lebanon, all of which are within easy walking distance of the site. That they were virtually unanimous in their opposition to locating a Wal-Mart there speaks volumes to us, at least about the wisdom of the plan.

Frankly, Wal-Mart's thinking escapes us. We're assuming strategists from the giant corporation have visited the site and have their reasons for liking it, but since they do not share their business plan, we are left to puzzle. It strikes us as illogical that a market the size of Lebanon, where there can be only so many Wal-Mart shoppers, needs three supercenters within a few miles of each other. Surely a third store would only take business away from the other two. And another discount store in addition to Kmart seems a particularly odd choice for the largely affluent southern part of the county.

This case provides a classic argument for intermunicipal regional planning. If your vision stops at the borders of North Cornwall Township, a Wal-Mart on the site might not seem as absurd as it does if you take into account the close proximity to Lebanon High School and the Cedar Crest secondary schools, to Cornwall Manor and Alden Place, to the Lebanon Valley Expo Center and Quentin Riding Club none of which actually is in North Cornwall.

But North Cornwall has traditionally gone it alone when it comes to planning. Engineer Derrick Woolridge, who was contracted by the township supervisors to study the traffic impact the Wal-Mart would have, was asked by resident Bruce Kreider at Thursday's hearing whether his traffic study had taken into account traffic from the nearby Cedar Crest schools. No, Woolridge responded, it didn't; the Cedar Crest schools do not lie within the designated study area.

Stupefying. Why waste the taxpayers' money on such a myopic study?

It's not clear that the township supervisors could legally do anything to block the Wal-Mart project, even if they wanted to (which they have not yet signaled). Apparently, the die was cast a year and a half ago when the zoning of the area in question was changed to retail/commercial. Our understanding is that if Wal-Mart properly jumps through the hoops, the supervisors have no choice but to approve the plans, since the use conforms with the zoning.

So in the end it likely will come down to Wal-Mart itself. Founder Sam Walton, in his autobiography, wrote: "If some community, for whatever reason, doesn't want us in there, we aren't interested in going in and creating a fuss."

We'll see.