By Michael Copley
Staff Writer

After months of delay brought on by Walmart’s repeated requests for deferral, the retailer’s rezoning application will be taken up by planning commissioners at their April 6 meeting- a long-awaited start to the public-hearing process.
At a meeting between the Powhatan Architectural Review Committee and store representatives last week, an attorney for Walmart indicated his client is ready to move forward.

The county’s architectural review committee has, for months, scrutinized elements of the proposed store design and met with Walmart representatives to push for a proposal that’s “a little less box,” in the words of one committee member, and that satisfies Article 31 of the county’s zoning ordinance- a measure “To encourage originality, flexibility, innovation in site planning and development,” according to the zoning ordinance.

Revisions of the store design focus on the front of the building and feature more stone and brick work- “the compromise we were able to provide,” according to a store representative- to give shoppers “a better approach to the store.”

Walmart representatives said their design flexibility is limited by the retailer’s new branding efforts; as part of a “changed vision and design aesthetic,” Walmart isn’t interested in trying to design locality-specific stores, a representative said. 

Most members of the county’s review committee said they are pleased with the changes they saw; “With something this large, the best we can do is change the front [of the building],” said one committee member.

But another said the changes Walmart has proposed don’t go far enough. “You’ve done the best you can do,” the committee member told store representatives, “but it’s not good enough for Powhatan.”

The architectural review committee functions as an advisory body for county officials and will be asked to provide a recommendation on the project. 

Powhatan recently paid an outside traffic engineering firm for a third party review of Walmart’s traffic impact analysis (TIA). That study by Martin Alexiou Bryson reports “mostly minor” discrepancies in Walmart’s TIA that aren’t expected to create significant changes in the results of that study.

That third-party review did, however, point to intersections in the area of the proposed building site and reported that “Due to the scale of this project, as well as the existing and future traffic conditions at adjacent roads and intersections, additional off-site improvements…should be considered.”