The Kaua‘i County Planning Commission has denied Wal-Mart’s request to expand its Lihu‘e store into Hawai‘i’s first supercenter.
Wal-Mart says its expansion will provide a wider variety of foods and goods and at lower prices than are available on Kaua‘i today.
During a meeting at the Lihu‘e Civic Center Tuesday, planning commissioners agreed with the county Planning Department’s conclusion that Wal-Mart had yet to meet all the conditions to expand its store from 120,000 to at least 185,000 square feet.
Those conditions include requiring a traffic study to outline the impact of any expanded Wal-Mart store on neighborhoods in Lihu‘e.
The planning department also said denial of the expansion was in order because no thorough review had been done of specified commercial uses, floor plans and exterior elevations of structures and off-street parking stalls for the Wal-Mart project.
“On Tuesday, (Wal-Mart’s) request to amend a Class IV zoning permit was denied, which means they don’t have permission to secure a building permit for (a second building that would constitute the expansion of the store),” Deputy Planning Director Imai Aiu said Wednesday. “(Wal-Mart’s) expansion plans are closed as far as we are concerned, for right now.”
Kevin Loscotoff, a senior public affairs manager with Wal-Mart in San Francisco, said he doesn’t see it the same way.
“We believe the (Planning Commission hearings) were unnecessary because we were not seeking the amendments (to permits Wal-Mart held),” he said yesterday. “And so the action that was taken is not negatively impacting the fact that we have previously approved plans for the expanded store.”
Loscotoff said he believes Wal-Mart will “ultimately be successful” in its expansion plans, based on a county planning commission approval in 1994 of permits allowing a Honolulu company to develop a huge development on land now leased by Wal-Mart.
But the proposed expansion is not entirely dead in the water, as Wal-Mart can petition the Planning Commission to reconsider its decision or seek legal remedies through the courts, Aiu said.
When the Kaua‘i County Council recently passed a law that limited “big box” retail and wholesale stores to no more than 75,000 square feet, Wal-Mart officials tentatively said legal action was a possibility but was a last resort.
The county Planning Department recently required Wal-Mart to file paperwork to amend permits for the proposed expansion because the proposed work involved a major change to a master plan for the 12.5-acre site on which the existing Wal-Mart store sites and an adjoining 11-acre parcel on which the expansion is proposed, Aiu said.
In addition, Wal-Mart made significant changes to the alignment of a road within the project, Aiu said.
“The county saw these things as a change from the original plan, and required Wal-Mart to amend its Class IV permit,” he said.
As part of its request to amend the 1994 permits, Wal-Mart wanted the additional space to house groceries, a frozen food section, a tire and lubrication center, a vision center and a portrait studio.
The roots of the Wal-Mart proposed expansion go back to 1992, when Honolulu-based KCom Corp. applied for a development use permit with the Planning Department to build a department store, a grocery store, an office building, retail shops and a restaurant, according to Kaua‘i architect and Wal-Mart representative Avery Youn.
Only the department store and the restaurant — McDonald’s n were built.
The government’s approval allowed for the construction of the first of five phases, including a 185,504-square-foot building, although the current Wal-Mart store comprises only 120,000 square feet, Youn said.
The same commission approved the development of structures in four other phases, which were never built. But Youn says they could still be constructed legally due to the 1994 permit approvals.
Councilman Jay Furfaro has said he doesn’t think the other four phases can be built out because Wal-Mart never received building permits for those phases.
Furfaro also said it was his opinion the current big box law supersedes the 1994 decision, and said the county will deal with any legal action by Wal-Mart to move its project forward.
Loscotoff said in response: “At this point, we are still evaluating our options to move forward with the expansion.”
