I think this is great news!
The group of local residents and business owners organized and conducted a positive and reasoned campaign to save their neighborhood.
The property owner's contention that only a big box will work for retail is a flawed argument. Big box stores destroy local economies.
Thank goodness that this one is stopped...for now.

Just drive to Eastport Plaza, if you have the sudden urge to buy poorly made Chinese crap.

I'm no fan of those stores either and I never shop them. But as more and more of our local job base degrades to minimum wage, where are people supposed to shop? Trader Joe's?

There are already two other Walmarts on 82nd...do they really need another?

And the Eastport...dont go there after dark. Go to the Clackamas store instead.

As for "poorly made Chinese crap"...that is anywhere, not just Walmart.

Awesome news!

Let it ring clear to businesses everywhere: unless you adhere to the leftist values of Portland's elites, you and your jobs are not welcome here!

Unless you operate in a fashion we deem acceptable, and unless your products further the goals of the ruling class, we not only don't want you, but we will make it impossible for you to do business here if you actually try.

Funny, isn't it, that this is almost inditinguishable from the economic plank of the fascist model.

Brought to you by the people who killed the proposed McDonald's on Hawthorne because it wasn't 'earthy' enough. They don't have a McFalafel after all....

" As for "poorly made Chinese crap"...that is anywhere, not just Walmart. "

Unfortunately, Jon is right about that.

The problem with the site is that for almost any decent sized big box style development (100,000 sq. ft or more), the developer is going to need a zoning change.

I just moved out of the Roseway nab and no matter what they decide to put there traffic will be a serious concern and they are going to have to have the neighbors on board.

So we are supposed to get on the train to kill Wal-Mart, but bow and support Costco?
Costco is for the poor ol' rich folk and Wal-Mart is for the down N outers...Now that is reasonable and fair..NOT!

So we are supposed to get on the train to kill Wal-Mart, but bow and support Costco?

And Ikea. Genuflect now!

I hear they are putting a few more "big box stores"...including new Costco...at Cascade Station. Along with Ikea, I wonder what that will do for traffic?

Anybody who comes away from this story thinking that the fight against this conditional-use permit had only an anti-Walmart component doesn't know squat about this neck of the woods.

There were some freaky Sandinistas around waving signs about evil Walmart, but they were far outnumbered by frequent Walmart shoppers opposed to altering the zoning from 60,000 to 240,000 square feet, and the increased number of vehicle trips in this stretch of 82nd. There were also significant numbers of neighbors who have lived near the site for decades and who attribute a variety of ailments, including a rather high rate of cancer in Madison South, to the presence of the toxic landfill on which the development was to be built. From what many of these folks told me, they were concerned with the developer's engineering reports referring to the need to drive long pilings down into the base of the landfill, which would have been a requirement of the increased mass of the 240,000 square-foot plan.

Of course there are always a few wingnuts, demanding that the landowner turn the land into a wildlife refuge, or wanting to find a way to require him to build a New Seasons, or Mercy Corps, or something lefty and "green." The driving force behind the 2,000 or so neighbors who banded together to fight this, in my view anyway, were people worried about the traffic impact and waking up the radon pool down under the driving range.

This is not a neighborhood of trust-funders with time on their hands to rail against Walmart, but working people who know that their neighborhood already has enough problems, without adding this one.

Well put General.

If a neighborhood doesn't want that type of development I support them fully. Zoning should be locally controlled by the people who are directly impacted.

What I object to is when the politicos manipulate zoning based on their particular biases; Ikea good, Wal-Mart bad, for example.