The Planning Board Screening Committee will review latest proposal for a Wal-Mart store off Spruce Street tonight (Thursday). Opponents of the proposed store will hold a rally before the meeting.
By:Lea Kahn Staff Writer
The Planning Board Screening Committee will review revised plans for a proposed Wal-Mart store on Spruce Street, and a group of opponents plan to rally outside the Municipal Building before the meeting tonight (Thursday) to make its position clear.
The opponents of the proposed store at 1060 and 1100 Spruce St. plan to hold a rally at 4 p.m. outside the Municipal Building, according to Robin Williams, a member of LET’s Stop Wal-Mart. The group is made up of opponents who live in Ewing and Lawrence townships and the City of Trenton.
The Screening Committee meeting is set for 5 p.m. in the lower level conference room at the Municipal Building. The committee goes over an applicant’s plans and offers suggestions before those plans are presented to the full Planning Board for a public hearing.
The current application is the latest in a series of proposed plans, dating to 2004. This is the third set of plans submitted for the planners’ approval. Neither of the two previous plans made it to a public hearing before the Planning Board.
The current proposal calls for building a 149,149-square-foot store that includes a 14,570-square-foot outdoor garden center unchanged from the last plan. There are 761 parking spaces, but 93 would be "banked" and not built until needed. There would be 688 spaces, including 12 handicap- and three van-accessible spaces. Earlier plans showed 620 parking spaces.
The entrance to the stand-alone Wal-Mart store would be made through two driveways. The northerly driveway, opposite Arctic Parkway, would allow cars to enter and leave the site. The southerly driveway would allow motorists to turn right off Spruce Street to enter the site and to turn right to leave it.
The LET’s Stop Wal-Mart group is not giving up on its mission to prevent the retailer from locating in Lawrence. The group has distributed leaflets advertising the rally, including at The College of New Jersey when the anti-Wal-Mart film "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices" was aired, said Ms. Williams.
LET’s Stop Wal-Mart, which includes many union members, opposes the Arkansas-based discount chain store because it claims the giant retailer is anti-union. The anti-Wal-Mart group also claims that big-box stores destroy neighborhoods, worsen the economic situation for workers and drive down wages.
But according to Wal-Mart’s Web site, the company is not opposed to unions. The company states it encourages employees to express their ideas, comments and concerns directly to managers. The company does not believe there is a need for a third party a union to come between the employees and the managers, the Web site said.
Wal-Mart does not drive down wages for workers, according to the Web site. The majority of the store’s hourly employees work full time, earning an average hourly wage of $9.68 per hour. This is nearly twice the federal minimum wage, the Web site said.