Wal-Mart on Wednesday submitted to the Harford County Department of Planning and Zoning a revised traffic impact analysis for its proposed Bel Air Supercenter, solidifying the company’s plans to proceed without access to MD 924.
The revised traffic analysis is based on site access along an extended Blue Spruce Drive, with secondary access to Plumtree Road and Bel Air South Parkway. County planning officials required a revised analysis of area traffic flows after the State Highway Administration denied Wal-Mart’s original request to access MD Route 924 for the site’s main entrance. Hundreds of area residents have decried the Superstore development, saying that it will snarl traffic in an already congested area.
Relatedly, the current landowner of the 33-acre site that includes the proposed Supercenter has scrapped plans for two of three additional lots at the site that were slated for future development.
In a Nov. 25 letter to Harford County Planner Alex Rawls, The Traffic Group, which represents Wal-Mart, said that areas of the overall site previously submitted for approval as Lots 4 and 5, and assumed to be for a specialty retailer and a gas station, were eliminated “to maintain more forestation onsite” and were therefore removed from the traffic analysis.
Bel Air attorney Robert Lynch, representing landowner Evergreen Business Trust, confirmed the move, although county officials said as of today they had not yet received formal reforestation and preliminary plans with Lots 4 and 5 removed. Together, the proposed lots total approximately 2.8 acres bordered by the planned Supercenter parking lot and MD 924.
Rawls said on Monday that eliminating future development Lots 4 and 5 from the traffic analysis would result in a reduced number of estimated trips accessing the overall site.
The revised traffic analysis submitted last week is currently under review by the Department of Planning and Zoning, according to Director Pete Gutwald. The lengthy submission includes estimated 2015 peak hour traffic volumes, and analyses of nearby intersection capacity and queuing.
Gutwald’s department is responsible for approving the development, including the sufficiency of Wal-Mart’s previously submitted traffic mitigation plan based on the revised traffic analysis. With zoning in place that allows for a big box retailer on the site, county approval of the Supercenter is based on adherence to established standards and regulations.
In his Nov. 25 letter, The Traffic Group Vice President Joseph Caloggero made the case for approval of the Wal-Mart traffic mitigation plan, writing: “Based on the data and analysis presented in this analysis, the results show that the roadway and signalization improvements significantly improve the traffic operations in the area.”
In addition to submitting the traffic analysis, The Traffic Group said that Wal-Mart plans bicycle lanes and sidewalks as required by county and state authorities.
A copy of the Nov. 25 letter from The Traffic Group appears below. The entire published submission can be found here: http://www.harfordcountymd.gov/PlanningZoning/Download/2023-1496.pdf
Bring on Walmart! Discounts for everyone
Money Tree would say no such thing and you know it.
I can’t wait to shop at the New improved Super Walmart.
What Wal-Mart wants Wal-Mart gets.
So they throw out this term “forestation” as if it’s supposed to suddenly change the intent of this hideous project to green and all community freindly. Whoopee they give us trees. That sad patch of trees in isolation will offer no respite to man nor animal. I promise you if that happens the entire sad patch of trees will be a catch all for plastic bags hanging shredded and stringlike from the trees like horrible ornaments along with bottles and cigarette butts washed in by rain. Screw the Walmart and this developer; you fool me not one bit.
What should be there instead? Another medical facility? Strip mall?
Don’t say nothing, because, that isn’t going to happen in the “development envelope.”
North Edgewood, a.k.a., “Bel Air South” will just have to deal with who property owners wish to sell their investments to, zoned accordingly.
Don’t say business park either, there is a nice gigantic office complex next to the target in Aberdeen that was finished, and has sat vacant for over a year now.
This way they get their filthy feet in the door and then do what they wanted to do all along. Ruin our neighbor!
Sharlene Krause and Money Tree –
There was nothing preventing you from purchasing this property and leaving it in its current state or you could have built a private park for the neighborhood.
Why didn’t you?
As a citizen I can support or criticize any project I like. The fact I can’t afford to buy it and turn it into a park does not obligate me to accept and go along, nor require silence from the entire community most of whom couldn’t afford to buy it either. Your fascist insistance upon a compliant public is duly noted.
There is no evidence you have ever supported any development project…. EVER!
You are nothing more that a chronic complainer, you must be a joy to be around.
Look the foul mouthed, internet stalker imagines himself a joy to be around. That’s rich.
@The Money Tree –
The owners of this property have a legal right to develop it.
You want to extend your property rights to someone else’s property and exert control over it because their legal commercial development displeases you.
BTW – You obviously have no idea what a fascist is.
The good news: The bigger the development the more rain tax the state can collect to save the bay.
They only want to save the bay when they can’t see big parking lots from their dining room window.
And everyone was celebrating when the 924 access was denied. They had a plan all along and the first one was to shoot for the stars on road access. The plan they submitted now is the one they most likely thought would be approved to start with.
The goal for most of those opposed to the new Wal-Mart site were based on traffic concerns. It appears that Wal-Mart has conceded the point and has chosen to include those community concerns into its business plans.
Now that its plans, on the surface of things, are more in synch with reality, I doubt that there will be much resistance to this new store.
They haven’t chosen to incorporate ANY suggestions from the community.
They were forced by SHA to redesign the site plan (something which was also suggested by the community a year ago).
But there isn’t one other single piece of input from the community they have put into their plan.
And the redesigned plan also poses issues with traffic, just different ones.
Putting aside the people who will never be happy, there are still quite a few concerns yet to keep a good number of people upset.
Personally, I am elated that they will not get an entrance on 924, which I found to be the most ludicrous idea of the whole thing. As a bonus, I’m thrilled that those other 2 parcels won’t be developed. Those are wins for the community, no matter what else happens.
Do you really think Wally world really went “back to the drawing boards”? I bet they have pages, pages, and more pages of ‘back up’ drawings for everything there is to ever be with this new construction site.
Well I look at it two ways. On one hand, why pay people to do all that extra work at extra expense if you never need it? So for that, I’d like to think they did go back and develop new plans.
On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that the largest retailer in the world, working with one of the most accomplished traffic engineering firms in the country and one of the area’s most well known developers, wasn’t able to buy enough dinners, read enough ordinances and law, or just, you know, apply a little common sense, and failed to realize their original plan was thoroughly idiotic? I mean, we’re talking normal every day people complaining about things that they turned out to be right about before the “experts” delivered the official analyses.
So, let’s assume you’re right, and it’s option #2. Well then you know what? That pisses me off, because that means they knew ahead of time that they probably couldn’t go ahead with that plan– a plan by the way that they showed to the public at the Community Input Meeting in July 2012, a plan that they had people in our Planning and Zoning Department trying to evaluate for months, and a plan that they insisted was the only way they could develop the site.
In other words, they suspected they couldn’t get away with it and despite immediate community opposition to the plan, went ahead with it anyway.
Oh, and let’s not forget that whole “can’t do groceries at Constant Friendship” thing they started out with 2 years ago when the news first broke which, as it turned out, was totally bogus and they later admitted that the language in the deed could be worked around without a problem.
So in essence, here’s a darling member of the community essentially misleading all of its customers and neighbors from the beginning, and continuing to do so all along.
Yeah, sure, can’t wait for those low prices. With morality such as this, it causes you to question how those prices get so low, eh?
You would like to think so. But I know people who live near this site, and the traffic problem was what they could use to mask the real reason they don’t want Walmart there. I can spell it out if you would like, but I think we are all intelligent enough to know what the “other” reason is.
I see your point, but it fails to take into account those of us who simply didn’t want to be sitting in traffic along 24 and 924 because a super Walmart was built without adequate traffic abatement along the major roads.
I’ve accepted that the Walmart is going there and that the County has all the tools it needs to deal with the road issue along the store’s entrances on Plum Tree and Bel Air South Parkway.
Now that the SHA is spoken and the developer has changed it plans slightly to reflect a better traffic arrangement, I cannot say that I am opposed to this site being developed accordingly, although there are probably some concerns about noise, public safety, etc that will have to be worked out, but I cannot see why those won’t be negotiated reasonably.
The only thing that makes me feel slightly uncomfortable is now that my concerns are fulfilled, I am growing closer to the opinions held by the “develop at any cost” crowd that likes to crow in the comments section of this website.
the ‘develop at any cost’ crowd that you disparage is just as valid as the ‘nimby’ crowd of whiners from Abingdon and the ‘BelAir South’ pseudo-elitists. As the welfare crowd of freeloaders expands further north and west from the I95/R40 (oh come on, you haven’t noticed the infestation of the foodstamp/sec8 crowd along the R24/924 yet?) in it’s inexorable march to Fallston/Forest Hill, the safety net of “as long as we keep ’em down in Edgewood” fallacy becomes more and more obsolete. Cancer spreads, you can’t contain it to the lungs or the liver; nor to Edgewood or Joppatowne. It’s just Abingdon people! The biggest joke has to be the residents that thought they were Todd Lakes or Worthington Valley! The ‘BelAir South euphemism not a designation of landed gentry; it’s just a clever distraction so shoppers won’t think they are actually shopping in or even around Edgewood. So you have the Deon Guthrie crowd quite willing to continue (and fund) the nonstop stream of welfare freeloaders and the better financed politicos from further north and west that are all too willing to sell out to the developers come together to ruin another once nice neighborhood. The low-information-voter pols team up with their well-heeled Republican counterparts and the show goes on.
Unfortunately there are not enough people that feel your way. They move into that area on a “promise” of living in a rural area. They are now upset that they were sold a bill of goods that ment nothing, and they see the Walmart complex as the last place to fight. I have said all along for those that want it period they need to buy the land and then they have a say of what to do with it.
Yea Walmart! I hope Bel Air is better stocked and has better deals than the Fallston store.
Lots of people have put away the
“No Bel Air Walmart” signs, or they were collected and trashed for being illegal signs by the road without a permit.
In my opinion, Harford County should dig a big hole there and make it the next site for a dump.
Edgewood North residents will be paying a lot more for trash removal once the trash starts going to Baltimore county. LOL
Funny how basically no one complained when a gigantic grocery store, and now strip mall of worthless shit was built on basically an otherwise, empty hill of woods.
I guess the pumpkin spice latte sippin’ mani pedi clientele is more welcome than whatever yuppies perceieve the wal mart crowd?
Actually, lots of people complained. But they weren’t organized, so they weren’t heard.
People are still complaining about Boulevard to this day. If people don’t take the time to learn, be involved, and organize themselves, they will never be heard.
The real issues of concern with the proposed store are the too-close proximity to six schools where students are walking without sidewalks every day — and more now that the buses have been cancelled to many of the neighborhoods — and the very heavy traffic that already exists along Emmorton Road, Route 24, Plumtree Road, and Bel Air South Parkway. It is incredibly difficult to travel anywhere in the afternoon or evening, or especially on a Saturday, in this area. The proposed apartments at Tollgate will make traveling even more difficult as that entrance to 24 would be closed. I have lived in and traveled many places, and have shopped at many Walmarts around the country, and I have never seen a Walmart built so close to schools before. It’s just not the right location for such a project. With the children walking along and running across Emmorton and Plumtree, it’s a huge safety concern.
The comments putting Edgewood down and denigrating people because they want to keep the area safe for children and traffic are incredibly unkind. It’s just not the right location for this project. It would be better suited to something with less commercial traffic, such as offices.
If you want an office, head on into Aberdeen on route 22 right past the Target. Let us know how many cars are in the parking lot.
Being close to schools is not a problem, in one instance in the county below us, there is a Walmart literally right across the street from a big expensive private school.
You are talking bunk! The size of the combined student populations don’t compare. And, the traffic from a small exclusive private school and it’s small sports programs is not in the same league as any Bel Air school. The volume of traffic that goes through this area already makes it unsafe for the school children in the area. A large number of these students, unlike the exclusive private school you mention, now walk to school thanks to HCPS.
btw–what school are you talking about? Put it opn the table so we can accurately compare the situations.
I believe the implication here is Harford county school children aren’t smart enough to navigate walking on a sidewalk to get home
Way to go BelAir Bob! Edgewood Road only has one side paved leading up to Edgewood Elementary school, and no sidewalk along Cedar Lane that schoolkids must navigate along with school busses and commuters. From the bias, caprice and unabashed cheek evident in many of these writers I guess the conclusion to be drawn is that kids in Edgewood are less important than those attending the ‘BelAir South’ schools.
Not sure what you mean by that, but there is no sidewalk on the right side of Emmorton Road going toward Ring Factory.
There is a lovely one on the opposite side of the street, maybe with some intensive training the children may find it.
The schools are missing a big opportunity here that’s right in plain view.
They could create a child safety roadway faciliator position, a glorified name for a crossing guard, pay them well to stand at intersections with bright green safety vests, whistle, and one of those cool orange cone lights to stop traffic.
I don’t believe a “big office/big parking lot” is going to fly there in place of a large retail center, like Wal-Mart – – – If it is even possible with the current zoning? There are plenty of spiffy, big offices with big parking lots that have the word “Lease” advertised across the windows. It probably isn’t a good idea to spend another few million of dollars in debt to have no tenants for the next gigantic suite of office space. Think about it, the tree huggers wont appreciate there is another big parking lot with no one to pay the rain tax. What!!! LOL!!!!
There is also a large number of empty retail locations too. Your point is?
You know there are some things we as a community can do to show our displeasure with Walmart and their greed. The first would be not to shop there. It’s really that simple. I for one am disgusted with Maryland taxes and so I try as much as possible to shop on-line for the items I need. Of course I know that this will soon probably not be an option as Maryland works to begin forcing on-line merchants to begin collecting tax. I also save up my purchases and go to Delaware or Pennsylvania (no tax on clothing). Just an option.
Concerned Citizen, you still owe Maryland sales and use tax on your purchases from Delaware, Pennsylvania and online.
So when can we expect your tax payment?
And business owners Maryland will audit you for your IT, laptop, equipment purchases you make online and out of state too. Maryland gets the most out of sales and use tax collection from business audits.
Of course you cannot expect progressives to run a first-class state like Maryland if people don’t pay their fair share, can you?
By the way Concerned Citizen Maryland does not appreciate you depriving Maryland workers of income since you give your business to out of staters.
Mind your own business Upton. I pay my fair share of Maryland taxes. The last time I checked it was still a free country and I can shop wherever I choose.
Yes you can shop where ever you want but you can’t choose which laws to and not to obey, the country isn’t that free.
How can you be a “Concerned Citizen” and be a tax cheat?
Send in the taxes you to the State of Maryland.
Regarding your out of state shopping are you ashamed of not supporting Maryland workers and government.
My original post was about how not to subside a large, greedy conglomerate pushing their way into our community with full knowledge about how the community feels. And suddenly it has morphed into faulty logic and name calling. I have always paid my fair share of taxes and instead of looking to others to subsidize my pension, I contribute to my own retirement. No guilt needed.
So now you don’t beat the state of MD out of sales tax you legally owe, when ever possible?
Ignore them CS – the trick is to pull you into a nonsensical argument that has nothing to do with any legitimate and reasoned concern you might have. I find the far left and far right have the same unfortunate habits – when they don’t like what you say they resort to name calling rather than rational thought.
Concerned Citizen, whether you think you are paying a “fair” share or not of taxes is irrelevant since you owe Maryland Sales and Use Tax on all non-exempt items that you buy no matter where you buy them.
Your fellow MD taxpayers will be looking forward to your remittance of your taxes on all your purchases.
Hey Money Tree…. Concerned Citizen’s initials would be CC not CS. I could lend you my broken clock. 😉
US: please cite for us all the operative code from Maryland Annotated Code that says I have to come back and pay Maryland State Tax on that sales-tax-free pizza I bought in Reheboth? You know, the one in Delaware, the state that manages to function just fine without imposition of a sales tax? Yeah the same Delaware that former Democratic Governor Harry Hughes retired to after he totally screwed Marylanders with his Cooper-Hughes tax bill that added upwards of fifty percent to everybody’s state income tax levy. He blew this state in a hurry to one without a sales tax. Kind of like John Kerry parking his yacht in another state to avoid paying Massachusetts boat taxes!
Here you go fat boy
http://taxes.marylandtaxes.com/Resource_Library/Tax_Publications/Tax_Tips/Business_Tax_Tips/bustip3.pdf
Does anyone remember when Schaffer had the revenue collectors sitting on the southern state border following the furniture trucks from N Carolina? Boy that was funny except to those people who bought new furniture.
Here is the form you can fill out fat boy to remit your tax.
http://forms.marylandtaxes.com/current_forms/st-118a.pdf
dcfattboy if you ate the prepared hot pizza in Delaware you owe no tax, however if you brought it back to Maryland you owe sales and use tax on it.
The Money Tree, you are right. I was just presenting another option to the Walmart issue. I don’t have time to be pulled into nonsenical arguments as I am too busy working to subsidize my fellow Marylanders…at least some of them. I think there are a couple people on here with either too much time on their hands or have some unresolved personal issues.
@Concerned Citizen –
You don’t seem to have a firm grasp of property rights.
Your property rights do not extend to commercially zoned property that the owner has a right to develop. You do not have the power to render other people’s property useless.
What makes this a great country is that we have property rights and the rule of law.
So when you have a legal remedy to your problem please let us know. Because NIMBY is not a legal cause of action. It’s just your opinion.
I could care less what Walmart does because I don’t shop there now and won’t in the future. I have long been disgusted by how they treat their workers and frankly Im not impressed with their merchandise. I was just
offering another perspective and
If you don’t like it or agree with it, tough s##t. Hope Walmart builds the biggest, ugliest thing ever, clogging up all your roads, selling you the cheapest, uglest crap there is.
Concerned Citizen –
So the same Crest Toothpaste at a lower price at Walmart is inferior to where you shop? Is the Kitchen Aid Mixer at Walmart different than the one at Sears, Kohls or Target?
You hate Walmart I get it, and I don’t care about your personal shopping habits and bias. It doesn’t matter.
The property owners have a right to sell their property to Walmart on duly commercially property.
They may have the right to sell it but the county doesn’t have to approve it if it. That is why the sale has NOT gone through yet and is contingent upon the less than likely approval by the county. This is not in the community or counties best interest .
And yes, this is STILL all about the traffic and safety. Remember that Walmart executives themselves have said that regular, non-holiday traffic load can be 10,000 to 12,000 car trips a day. The gas station and the fast food spot that they eliminated from the TIA were just a small number of car trips to the site. This is an inappropriate development for this site.
FYI– the toothpaste is cheaper at Wegmans, the mixer is cheaper at Kohls with your 30% off and Kohls bucks, and you can get cheaper prices and better service by filling your prescriptions at Wegmans, Giant, or Target and not the cattle call they have at Walmart.