FORT WRIGHT — Citing concerns about traffic, city council rejected a proposed Wal-Mart superstore and shopping center by a vote of 5 to 1 at the conclusion of a 7 1/2-hour meeting early Thursday.

        The 2:30 a.m. vote left the developer with three options. He can drop the proposal, revise the development plan and resubmit it to area planners or file suit in Kenton Circuit Court.

        Wal-Mart representatives, the owner of the site where the supercenter was planned and the two parties' lawyers did not return phone calls to The Enquirer Thursday. Fort Wright officials said they also had not heard from anyone connected with the project regarding the plans.

        Representatives of Arkansas-based Wal-Mart and Jim Berling, an engineer from Fort Wright, had proposed building the 204,184-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter and 12 smaller retail businesses on 64 acres off Ky. 17 between Orphanage Road and Highland Pike.

        The site is owned by Mr. Berling's B&Z Development Inc., which Fort Wright officials estimated has invested several million dollars in the project.

        Al Norman, the author of Slam Dunking Wal-Mart and the founder of Sprawl Busters, a group dedicated to helping communities fight unwanted megastores and large-scale developments, said Fort Wright's situation is not unique.

        Mr. Norman's Web site lists 118 communities in the United States and Canada that have stopped superstores such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

        “Even if you go back to the early '90s, it was pretty much a developers' game,” Mr. Norman said. He added that that has changed in recent years as opponents of superstores have seen the impact these projects have on their business communities and have become more savvy in dealing with local planning and zoning bodies.

        “Until five or six years ago, the attitude of most cities around the country was that they wanted new retailers because of the tax revenues that they would bring,” said Tom Kingsley, principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based social policy research organization. “I think there's more interest now in stopping growth that does not look like it'll be so helpful to local communities.”

        Mr. Norman said he currently is involved in a fight to stop a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter in Henderson, Ky., where planners met Thursday night to consider a third proposal from the nation's largest retailer to build a superstore in an area surrounded by homes.

        “I think that our effectiveness is increasing month by month, as citizens get a better sense of what they have to say and do,” Mr. Norman said.

        Because of public interest in the Wal-Mart proposed for Fort Wright, city officials moved Wednesday night's meeting to the St. Agnes Church undercroft, which was filled with a standing-room-only crowd of about 300. All but council member Jeff Wolnitzek rejected Wal-Mart's plan in the early-morning vote.

        In voting against B&Z Development's plan to build the Valley Plaza development anchored by the Wal-Mart Supercenter, Fort Wright officials questioned the thoroughness of the Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission's review of the project.

        “They are the, quote, experts, and I don't feel that they did an expert job,” said Fort Wright Councilman Don Martin. “There were a bunch of technical questions that should have been asked by them that weren't.”

        Councilman Jim Robke said he was concerned that the area planning commission did not have its own traffic engineer on staff, and instead, relied on the recommendations of a traffic engineering firm hired by the developer.

        When Fort Wright recently commissioned its own traffic study from Wilbur Smith Associates consulting engineers and planners, the city's consultant said that even with the traffic improvements the developer had proposed, five nearby intersections would be worse off than they are now if the proposed Wal-Mart were built, Mr. Robke said.

        “Why would we, as a community, want to spend several hundred thousand dollars on traffic improvements if all we're going to do is make things worse?” asked Mark Guilfoyle, who joined fellow lawyer Patrick Hughes in representing Fort Wright residents who opposed the Wal-Mart.

        The city's traffic study and opponents at Thursday's meeting also questioned whether the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter fit the permitted uses in the site's neighborhood shopping center zone.

        Mr. Guilfoyle and Mr. Hughes gave Fort Wright council petitions with signatures of 600 people who opposed the Wal-Mart. Opponents said the project would worsen an already bad traffic situation on and near Ky. 17, that it would hurt small businesses and would cause property values to drop.

        “We asked council to consider the petitions to give context to their deliberations, not as a reason to vote the project down,” Mr. Guilfoyle said. “I think council did a good job. They really listened closely to the evidence and educated themselves on this matter. And the residents really did their homework and took an active role in this ... The process worked exactly how it's supposed to.”

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