Simi Zones for Wal-Mart ‘Power Center’

Call it the stealth store.

Wal-Mart was never even officially on the agenda at this week’s Simi Valley City Council meeting. The mayor did his best to ban anybody from even mentioning its name. And council members spent most of a seven-hour debate over its future talking only about land-use issues.

But Wal-Mart emerged intact.

In the early hours of Tuesday, after a debate that started Monday night, the City Council voted 4 to 1 to approve a zoning change that would allow construction of a proposed “power center” anchored by a 135,000-square-foot Wal-Mart store.

Ironically, the council had no power to approve or reject Wal-Mart itself.

Developer Stan Rothbart could have built the store on the parcel, which is east of Madera Road south of the Ronald Reagan Freeway, by obtaining nothing more than the city planning department’s approval stamp on a set of blueprints.

But the power center was a different matter, requiring council approval for Rothbart to build stores smaller than the 70,000-square-foot minimum size the west end was zoned for.

And the zoning change itself--from light industrial to subregional retail--did not go down without opposition.

Councilwoman Barbara Williamson cast the sole no vote, which she confessed in an interview Tuesday was primarily a vote against Wal-Mart.

“Will I enjoy the tax revenue that comes from it? Yeah. And do I think it will be as much as everybody claims it is? No,” Williamson said. “Everybody says we’ve got to catch up with [higher tax revenues in] Thousand Oaks and Oxnard, but I’ve got news for them: It ain’t going to happen.”

Despite a plea from Mayor Greg Stratton that nobody even mention Wal-Mart by name, many residents and businesses spoke out at Monday’s hearing against the zone change--and the store--saying that Wal-Mart would hurt other Simi Valley businesses.

Some said they feared that the Arkansas-based general merchandise store would bring only low-paying jobs to the city instead of higher wages that would come with light industry--which is still permitted under the new zoning.

“I really believe that was mandated by the general public, and I think that’s my job, to listen to them,” Williamson said.

What’s more, a survey of 1,600 Simi Valley residents two years ago found that 71% opposed bringing Wal-Mart to town, she said.

But after the vote Tuesday, Councilman Bill Davis echoed the sentiments of the pro-Wal-Mart faction, arguing that the store would lure more Simi Valley residents to shop closer to home.

“I talked to people at the stores in the Valley and Oxnard,” Davis said. “It’s truly mind-boggling to think that 15% of the business [at Wal-Mart] in Oxnard is from people in Simi Valley, and 12% of the Price-Costco business in Woodland Hills is from people in Simi Valley,” even though there is a Costco in Simi Valley.

Davis predicts that the power center will draw shoppers from Moorpark, Fillmore, Santa Paula and possibly Chatsworth, and give Simi Valley a strong economic base on which to build its long-dreamed-of regional mall.

Rothbart, from Santa Monica, said Tuesday that he will submit development plans and apply for a building permit from the city within 45 days.

Earthmovers will have to shift about 800,000 cubic yards of earth to flatten the erosion-carved hillside enough to support a foundation, he said. The 300,000-square-foot project will also include an as-yet unnamed big-box store selling toys, home-improvement products, pet supplies, clothes or electronics, he said.

And Rothbart estimated that the center will take about 10 months and $40 million to $50 million to build, once city planners approve it.

“We are certainly a long ways away,” he said.

Simi Valley rejected an earlier proposed Wal-Mart back in late 1993.

The chain sought to build a huge discount general-merchandise store at the northern end of 1st Street, the site of an as-yet unplanned regional shopping mall.

But voters vetoed it by rejecting Measure V, a referendum on whether the city’s hillside ordinances could be waived to let the Wal-Mart chain build there.