Trouble In Camelot Residents Of A Peaceful Subdivision Named Camelot Are Organizing Opposition To Plans By Wal-Mart To Locate One Of Its Store There

For a subdivision named after the castle where King Arthur and the knights of the Roundtable gathered, Camelot has been as peaceful as a friar.

The biggest event at this middle-class hamlet on Newport Highway is the annual garage sale, where bargain hunters search for the holy grill, a Weber with an air vent.

But surprised by news that Wal-Mart hopes to construct a 130,000-square-foot store next door, some Camelot residents are suddenly breathing fire.

“This is just a shame,” says Karen Barniol, a Camelot homemaker who’s organizing opposition to Wal-Mart, which would be the centerpiece of a 40-acre shopping center on the south edge of the neighborhood.

Like so many north Spokane neighborhoods, Camelot lies in the path of commercial development. Until now, however, none has been kissed by Wal-Mart, the Arkansas-based discount retailer that’s a symbol of shopping and a magnet for growth.

With a flurry of housing built around Green Bluff, Colbert and Deer Park, shoppers have moved north and driving Newport Highway has begun to feel like a trip down North Division. That’s forced retailers such as Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer to hunt for available space on the far North Side that’s convenient for shoppers and compatible with county zoning ordinances.

The Wal-Mart project, north of Newport Cinemas on the Nelson Landscape Service Inc. property, is predominantly zoned residential. Wal-Mart and the Nelsons are seeking to change that to a regional business zone, the most intense use possible for the site.

The change would forever alter the lifestyle of neighbors in every direction.

As many as 2,400 cars per hour would drive in or out of the shopping center, according to a Wal-Mart traffic study. That would match a busy day at NorthTown Mall, city records show.

Shoppers would spend money in nearly 370,000 square feet of retail space, including the Wal-Mart store, a yet unnamed discount store equal to Wal-Mart’s size and several other buildings. Fast-food restaurants and acres of parking would accommodate shoppers where kids once rode bikes through tree groves and sledded on an area known as the “Big W.”

Squirrels, song birds and rabbits on the land would be displaced.

Ironically, the development would replace a business whose main purpose is to grow trees. Nelson’s Landscape, a wholesale supplier of trees and shrubs, has been on the property since 1961, when Dave Nelson was born.

Duane and Donna Nelson sold the business a dozen years ago but hung onto the property. As an adult, son Dave continues to operate a landscape design business on the site out of the home in which he grew up.

The Nelsons said Wal-Mart approached them last year about selling a piece of their land for a retail store. The remainder of the property will be developed by the family’s Pente Partnership, giving them control over the type of tenants in the center.

“There’s a lot of fond memories there,” Duane Nelson says. “We’re not going to turn it loose and create a monster.”

According to Wal-Mart’s request for a zoning change, 75 percent of the shopping center property will be covered by buildings or asphalt. The majority of existing vegetation will be removed except on the perimeter, where power lines provide a 100- to 200-foot buffer from the back yards of Camelot north of the site, and College Place homes to the south.

Not everyone opposes the plan.

Maralyn Coe, a grandmother and 12-year resident of Camelot, says she’s learned to expect change.

“It doesn’t make much difference to me,” she says. “If they want to do it, I figure they will.”

But others are fighting mad.

Claudia Couch, a College Place resident who recently helped gather 100 signatures to oppose a proposed Alton’s Tire Store on the Newport Highway, says she and her neighbors will join Camelot to fight Wal-Mart.

“I’m not pleased,” Couch says. “We’ll get the ripple effect of that project.”

Before Wal-Mart can begin construction, Spokane County commissioners must ignore opponents and agree to rezone the property. The commissioners could find it difficult to reject the America’s largest retail chain, which will anchor a shopping center that promises both increased tax revenue and job growth.

The chain operates 2,247 Wal-Mart stores, including 15 in Washington and three in North Idaho. It has 640,000 employees and garners $93.6 billion in annual sales.

Up to 700 people would work at the Wal-Mart and other stores at the shopping center, county files show.

While many communities have opposed Wal-Mart stores, few ever win.

Barniol, however, thinks Camelot, a subdivision of 290 homes, has a chance. Residents, she says, bought their homes with the understanding that the Nelson’s property was zoned for residential development. And the county’s division of building and planning initially has opposed Wal-Mart’s rezoning request.

Moreover, the traffic impacts on Newport Highway and those who live around the Wal-Mart site may be too egregious to ignore, Barniol argues.

The county last year permitted a “fire lane” through the back side of Camelot connecting to Hastings Road. Once shoppers discover the paved shortcut between a Fred Meyer store under construction at Wandermere Shopping Center, at Hastings and Highway 395, and WalMart, Barniol warns, they’ll zip through Camelot.

“We’re going to become a cut-through area,” says Barniol, mother of two boys. “This plan makes the neighborhood unsafe for kids.”

County planner Steve Davenport says a public hearing will be held later this summer and a decision on the rezoning request could be made in time for Wal-Mart to begin clearing the land before snow falls.

Whatever the decision, it is certain to affect this and future generations.

“This is a fun place,” says 10-year-old Joey Owens as he and his friends explore Nelson’s forest behind Camelot. “I think they should have a bike track all around and then pave over the rest.”

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