Unable to reach an extension on a contract to purchase coveted property at the intersection of Route 924 and Plumtree Road, Walmart has ended its years-long, highly-controversial planned relocation and construction of a Supercenter store on the Bel Air site.
For longer than four years, Walmart proposed to build a 186,000 sq. ft. Bel Air Supercenter on land that is zoned “B3, General Business District”, a designation that allows for the development of such a store. The Supercenter, which might have been be open 24 hours a day, was to include the sale of groceries, an automotive center, pharmacy with drive thru, and a garden center. Company officials said at a community input meeting that the store could generate up to 10,000 vehicle trips per day.
Just after 5pm on Monday, Harford County Councilman Jim McMahan announced via his Coffee Talk public email list that, “As of 5pm today I have been told be reliable sources that Walmart is no longer interested in pursuing the site at Plumtree and 924,” he wrote.
“I THINK THE PEOPLE SPOKE!,” he added.
Later in the evening, Walmart confirmed the information. According to Walmart spokesman Lorenzo Lopez:
“We were unable to reach agreement on an additional extension of the contract to purchase the site located at the intersection of Route 924 and Plumtree and are no longer pursuing a relocation to that property.
“We greatly value our relationship with Harford County, and remain committed to serving the many Harford County residents who shop in our stores and benefit from access to quality goods at affordable prices. We would also like to thank the many Harford County residents who have supported Walmart’s efforts.”
After the Walmart relocation was initially proposed, a citizens group called No Bel Air Walmart was formed to oppose the plan at every step along the way – from passing out literature and bumper stickers at community events to filling public hearings with testimony to lining the streets and waving signs at passersby.
As plans for the new Bel Air Walmart made their way through the approval process, traffic concerns were raised, new zoning legislation was proposed, and revelations of an obscure provision in the deed for the Abingdon location limiting the sale of groceries on the property until 2018 – and thus preventing the company from expanding the store into a Supercenter – were made public.
It remains unclear if Walmart still intends to relocate to a new location in the area other than the Plumtree Road and Route 924 site.
Congrats to the No Walmart Group. You should be very proud, this proves that citizens do have control over their communities.
If you live in Bel Air. That development behind Target went up without any interest in what the neighborhoods around it had to say, It was approved and built in less than a year.
But the property is STILL zoned B3, just mean another Big Box Store is on its way.
Can we get shitmart and waffle house out of fallston!
Great news! We don’t need another poor quality retailer that treats its employees like slaves.
I wouldn’t trust them too much. This could be a smokescreen to let people become complacent. Need to keep an eye on this as time goes on. It is still zoned commercial.
So Harford county becomes more dependent on politicians for jobs and sends a message across the country – Don’t come here UNLESS you’re the type of business we politicians want. Hypocrisy at its best. Congrats you have become official sacred cow of Maryland, Where people are dependent on 58% of their jobs from a non-productive government job. It it was for APG this county would be toast!
I hope those people get BRAC’D the hell out of here, and soon.
Having to endure all those non drivers barreling down 715 full throttle merging onto 40 wothout a turn signal and without even looking.
God damn idiots. Rushing to get home in your stick built cookie cutter house or crowd a restaurant with their loud and annoying crybaby kids.
Waaaaaaaaaaa
It will happen. Huntsville is the target location for AMC activities (and has been for years.) Whether the leadership wants to admit it or not, CECOM will be on it’s way their eventually
They would find some other command to fill those gigantic office buildings.
Mehhh, they’ll just let’uhm sit vacant for decades. You should know this, my doppelganger.
Those “GD Idiots ” pay your redneck taxes, educate your snotty nose,, heroin addicted children,, What you want is more section 8 around your goat smelling ass neighbor hood…Good DAy!
To be clear there is no sacred cow…nobody in government kept Walmart out. Last I checked we have more businesses in Harford County than are probably needed and that includes retail space, office space, etc. There’s an entire 3 story office building in Aberdeen that’s never had a tenant and nothing but strip malls and chain restaurants as far as the eye can see. It isn’t anti-business to want some control of the neighborhoods because there must be a balance between livability, preservation of neighborhoods and business growth. Walmart was trying to shoe horn into a space too small for what they wanted, in an area surrounded by neighborhoods and roads poorly prepared or designed for the expected increased flow of traffic. I suspect Walmart chose not to move because it became clear moving down the road with the clock ticking towards 2018 just to put in a grocery section no longer made financial sense. They’ll add the grocery at their present location – the same grocery they claimed was impossible there once again proving how disingenuous the Walmart team was the entire time.
the only problem wit that statement was that walmart was coming in, fixing the roads (Like it always does) and then there is plenty of space for flow of traffic…. the xpansion would open up even more jobs, and a larger variety of products….. we have a smaller one here in abingdon, and it doesnt carry most of the odds and ends you can find in say aberdeen or fallston…. the MORONS in this NO BEL AIR Walmart group, have just made a leap in the local economy turn into he same steady decline…. not to mention all the contractors that would be hired to build and such for the grounds. there is a difference between things here that a LOT of people are missing
The land is almost surely going to be developed anyway, so your statements about jobs, economy, retail choices, etc, are insignificant. There is almost no economic data that shows that a Walmart improves a local economy more than other types of similar development. Finally, if they don’t put it somewhere else in Bel Air, they will upgrade the one in Constant Friendship, a mere 3 miles away, so what exactly was lost?
Also, they never intended to truly “improve” the roads in the area. To say such a thing is to demonstrate fundamental misunderstanding of how this works. Development only has to “mitigate” their impact, which means they only have to make sure the roads work as well after they are done as they did before they started. Further, their traffic studies were not done correctly– which is why the county made them do it twice– and the “improvements” they sought just weren’t going to work for that area.
Four years ago the county stated a traffic light couldn’t be put at Blue Spruce and Bel Air South Pkway– 2 years later, Walmart proposed to put one there. Does that make any sense? Of course not.
Most of the roads around that site are currently graded at a “C” or less in functionality, several of them are D or F, and when Walmart was done (as outlined in their own traffic study), most of them would have kept the same grades.
To say they would be “improvements” is totally inaccurate.
As a private employer, it is these types of actions that worry me. This is not about local residents. I wish I could move to a more business friendly area. By the way enjoy your new drinking hole right in the heart of Bel Air – that must be the kinds of jobs … waiters and bartenders that support of tax base.
I hope that property gets developed into thousands of apartments or high density townhouses. What happened to the rights of property owners to do what they want with their property? I don’t like to shop at Wal Mart, but this is wrong for Wal Mart, wrong for the property owner, and wrong for the majority of citizens. This isn’t just about one parcel of land or one business. It’s about a few loud mouth liberals trying to tell me how I am allowed to live my life and run my business.
People just didn’t want to face the reality that “Bel Air South” is in reality “Edgewood North.”
I think a Flying J truck stop should do, and yes, that far from the interstate, which really isn’t that far.
I’d love to be there when a 1980’s Detroit engine powered tractor trailer flips on the Jake brake rolling through the neighborhoods at 0Dark30.
The new rumor is it’s going to become the site of a new detention center and trash transfer station.
Yippeee!
The loud mouthed conservatives should make a stand against this kind of action then. Where were they to argue for the development?
What a ridiculous sentiment. You’re anger is so obviously misguided, and apparently ill-informed.
So simply owning the property permits one to build whatever one wishes regardless of the community? Is any resident of the area allowed a voice/vote in the decisions that affect their community in profound ways?
Assuming the owner will do something with the site, what would everyone want to see on that site in terms of a use. Retail, Apartments, Office?
Does any one care about what is being built off 24 behind Declaws? What about the wild life that lived in that area? Who cares?
Those who drive the area and pay attention know that Tollgate road is getting punched through and Condos and office space is going there!
America – anything is possible right?
Rezone the dang property and make it a huge park
And you are volunteering to pay the owner for the loss in value of their property? Thanks for stepping up!
Breaking ground in 2016:
Bel Air K-Mart.
Not sure where all the vitriol for the area and the people who live there come from but I pity folks posting here if they are really as unhappy as they appear to be. Walmart made a financial decision. They did not want to do what was required under the law to move forward and so they didn’t. Anyone developing property anywhere in the county must address impact to the surrounding area and weigh the costs and benefits.
You might want to reread the article use your finger if necessary. The contract wasn’t extended by the seller. Dahan estate is desperate to dump the property ASAP
Larry Flynt’s people have been eyeing up that property and waiting to pounce on it if the WalMart deal didn’t go through. I guess we get BOOBIES now! Woo-Hoo!!!
So Walmart is out but be careful what you wish for. It’s open season for the property now and I’m sure there is another major retailer that will become interested and will they be any better then what just left?
Please Jim McMahan, perhaps if the residents had spoken when the property was zoned for this type of Business there would not have been a need for all of the hysterics, oh but wait, then Politicians like you would not be able to claim that they “saved” the community. You and your ilk created the mess in the first place.
Does the “No Bel Air Wal MArt: group intend on purchasing the property now and converting it into something other than what it is zoned for? Who is the next undesirable business that we can turn away?
rezone asap!
open space/park
You do realize that the current owner/developer has some say in that process, right? How about like I just said, the ‘Now Bel Air Walmart buy it up and convert it to a park!
If I was the owner I would turn it into a Hog or Chicken farm. They would beg for a Wal-Mart.
The only thing more amazing to me than the number of people who will either fail to read the article, or fail to understand what it says, is the number of those people who then starting talking about what they didn’t read or understand by posting comments that clearly highlight they no grasp of the facts.
I said a long time ago that the only way to stop Walmart was to stall/wear them down, or get them to change their minds. It sounds like it was moreso the stalling that worked, because it sounds like the owner of the property didn’t want to sit on it for them any longer.
What that means, is that they probably have a good lead on another buyer…
True but if Walmart was still very interested in that site they would be negotiating aggressively for more time and I’m sure sweetening the pot if necessary. I would imagine rather than risk a long and contracted lawsuit these two sides mutually agreed to move on. Sort of suggests some truth in your last comment because otherwise one of the sides would have been the loser in the split.
You are sure of nothing and just giving wild half assed guess’s. WalMart stock is down dramatically, if anything they would be asking the seller for concessions because of the delays. The property needs to be sold, they sold the office in Hickory and this is their last Harford county holding.
The Walmart fight was principally about a bad plan in a bad location. That fight appears to be won, which is terrific. The rest of it, property values, saving trees, etc, was mostly immaterial window dressing.
Look up the B3 designation and pick your poison.
One thing is that very few of the possibilities would bring as much traffic as the Walmart supercenter WITH groceries would have brought, so that’s almost certainly a win for the community.
Whatever the next thing is will carry it’s own problems. But so long as the plan is well thought out for the location and doesn’t push all of it’s shortcomings onto the community to live with or fix, you won’t hear me complaining about it.
The fight is not “won,” the developer wants to sell the property immediately, it’s zoned for a big box store. Someone will buy it and put a big box store on the property. The question is who, and it’s not going to be Cabelas or Bass Pro.
Well, I said the fight over a bad plan to put a Walmat in a bad location, was “won”. Which it is, apparently.
And it’s not zoned for a “big box store” exclusively, it could be a lot of things. But as I said, almost none of those things, including another “big box store” would carry as much traffic, so that fight is also virtually won.
As for the other crap about trees, and land values, and retail pay, or whatever people want to fuss over, that will just get deliberated all over again almost no matter what goes there.
It’s zoned for sleazy motels, tattoo parlors and porn shops. They would really class up that section of edgewood north.
There’s nothing that could be developed there that would have nearly the negative traffic impact of an average of an additional 20+ cars on 924 and BA South Parkway every minute during normal shopping hours. And their admission of 10,000 trips per day, I’m sure, was conservative. So glad the residents spoke and that the local government held them to the same standards every other business must adhere to.
“ Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
Cree Indian Prophecy