Wal-Mart Store’s Fate to Be Decided by Voters

Members of the Simi Valley City Council Monday said they unanimously favored holding a special election to decide the fate of a proposed Wal-Mart store.

The election is necessary, council members said, because the retailer wants to locate in a hilly area that the council promised years ago would remain undeveloped until a new regional mall is built.

With the mall construction indefinitely shelved, city officials were faced with deciding whether to reverse themselves and allow Wal-Mart to be built on 32 acres of the 129-acre mall site or risk losing the retailer, which is expected would generate considerable sales tax revenue.

The council decided Monday that the voters should make that decision.

“My position is that I made a commitment to the voters that we would only grade that hillside for a mall,” Mayor Greg Stratton said before the meeting. “Wal-Mart is not a mall, I have not heard that they want to build a mall, so if (Wal-Mart) wants my vote on it, they’re going to have to get the voters to say they support it.”

The election, which council members said could be held this November or June, 1994, will cost $84,000 if it is the only item on the ballot. If a countywide measure is included on the ballot, the cost would fall to $16,800, officials said.

Council members Monday said the fate of the election is now in the hands of Wal-Mart officials, who must decide whether to pursue the vote and if they would be willing to pay for it. All five council members said they would oppose spending city funds on the ballot measure.

When city voters adopted a tough hillside protection ordinance in 1986, they agreed to exempt the rolling hills between Erringer Road and 1st Street--seen as the city’s last available space for a regional mall--in exchange for the council’s promise that the mall would be the first thing built on the land.

Only Stratton and Councilman Bill Davis were on that council, but the three relative newcomers agreed Monday that the city could back away from that promise only if authorized to do so by a vote of the people.

“I think this takes a lot of political pressure off the council,” Barbara Williamson, the newest member of the council, said before the meeting. “People might not want to say that, but it’s true. It certainly gets us off the hook.”

In an application filed in February, Wal-Mart asked the city to change the planning guidelines so its 151,000-square-foot store could predate the mall.

Since the company’s plan to locate in Simi Valley was made public, a small group of labor leaders, conservative activists and environmentalists calling themselves the Coalition for Jobs, the Environment and Business has objected to the move.

Members of the group said they fear that allowing a discount store to be built adjacent to the proposed mall will scare away upscale tenants if the mall is someday built.

Stratton said that may indeed be the case.

“That’s an issue that has to be discussed,” he said. “I don’t know that it’s 100% true, I don’t know that it’s all false, either . . .. The purpose of making the mall come first was to get us out of arguing that point.”