Neighbor group cheers as Wal-Mart leaves Lancaster

Members of Our Lancaster First are cheering Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s decision Friday to withdraw its plans for a “Supercenter” store in North Lancaster.

Robert Bermingham said Sept. 14 that the group is planning a celebration Tuesday to commemorate the end of their year-and-a-half battle against the Arkansas-based retailer. He and Selectman Jennifer Leone credited the citizen’s group, comprising Lancaster and Leominster residents, with playing a role in stopping the project, although Wal-Mart spokesman Christopher Buchanan disagreed.

“That’s a direct result of our announcement we made at our annual shareholders’ meeting,” Buchanan said. “We basically plan to moderate our growth of U.S. Supercenters. Unfortunately, Lancaster was one of the projects where we simply took a second look.”

Buchanan thanked Lancaster for its “great support in the community”: “It wasn’t an easy decision” to withdraw from the project, he said, and “it’s not easy to deliver that news, either. We enjoyed so much support in the Lancaster community, not only from the town but from the people themselves.”

He noted that another Wal-Mart Supercenter, on Route 117 in Leominster, is under construction. He said with a new store opening only 3 miles from Lancaster, he expects Wal-Mart to “serve our Lancaster customers as well as our Leominster customers and be an active corporate citizen in both communities.”

The notion that it would build two massive projects so close together was flawed from the start, said Bermingham.

“Wal-Mart wasted 15 months of the town’s time and energy, not to mention Our Lancaster First’s time and money, hiring experts to refute Wal-Mart’s claim,” Bermingham told the Times & Courier. “It’s frivolous to put another Supercenter 3 miles from the Leominster site. There’s just no need for it.”

Leone, who co-founded Our Lancaster First and recused herself from selectmen’s discussions on the project after her election to that board, said the presence of a mobilized neighborhood kept Wal-Mart out of Lancaster.

“Our opposition might have slowed it down enough that it encouraged Wal-Mart to go ahead and build on 117,” Leone said Friday. “If things had gone without opposition here, you would have seen it here.”

She noted that the Leominster project was approved with several conditions — such as limited hours of operation — that were not present in Lancaster.

When asked if the vocal opposition to the project factored into Wal-Mart’s decision to exit Lancaster, however, Buchanan said “No, absolutely not.” He said the company had been “100 percent committed to both projects” prior to last week’s shareholders’ meeting.

Wal-Mart had planned to build a 217,000-square foot store on Old Union Turnpike, near Route 2 and the Leominster city line, with a drive-through pharmacy, automobile shop, drive-through garden center and supermarket. The store would have been open all night, leading some neighbors to complain it would bring noise, crime and glaring lights to the rural neighborhood.

Last Monday, Wal-Mart cancelled its agreement to lease the land on which the store would sit, Buchanan said. The company would have to go through the site acquisition process again if it decided to return to Lancaster.

It’s unlikely another project of this magnitude will succeed on Old Union Turnpike, said Paul Bermingham, Robert’s father and also a member of Our Lancaster First.

“There’s certainly an awful lot of good citizens who have gotten a good wakeup call,” the elder Bermingham said Friday. “I’ve certainly met an awful lot of wonderful people, good friends and neighbors.” The 15-month fight with Wal-Mart showed him, he said, “what a group of neighbors can do when they get together.”

Leone, who lives a quarter-mile from the back wall of the proposed store, said her next priority is to find a way to develop North Lancaster that she and her neighbors can support.

“As an individual property owner, I’m thrilled” to see Wal-Mart leave, she said. “As an elected member of the town [government], I really think this is in the best interest of the town. … I think that parcel certainly will be developed, and this will give us time to encourage something better suited to the size and scale of our town, keeping in mind that we really do want and need to increase our tax base and take some of the burden off our residential taxpayers.”

In the meantime, Robert Bermingham saw Friday’s announcement as an opportunity to celebrate.

“Our Lancaster First was fighting Town Hall and Wal-Mart, and people told us frequently that we couldn’t stand up to a giant corporation,” Bermingham said, but “we’re still standing and they’re not.”

(Add your comments at the Times & Courier blog. Michael Ballway can be reached at 978-365-8040 or mballway-at-cnc.com.)