MARYSVILLE — Five years after it was approved, Wal-Mart is ready to build a new store in town.
The giant retailer received the OK in 2006 to build the store at the northwest corner of 64th Street NE and Highway 9, said Gloria Hirashima, city administrator.
Wal-Mart in the years since
has told the city that plans to build were still being worked out. Last month, the retailer requested a building permit, and a company spokeswoman now says that construction on the 147,000-square-foot store is likely to begin before the end of the year.
Mayoral candidate Kelly Wright said he believes that the project is being jump-started by a tax break from the city that exempts large retailers from paying traffic-impact fees.
Not so, say city officials and Wal-Mart.
“In August, they pulled a building permit, and maybe that’s why people are saying we must have done something recently,” Hirashima said.
Wright, who is running against incumbent Mayor Jon Nehring, said he is suspicious that an ordinance passed in April that approved a refund to Costco for traffic-impact fees applies to Wal-Mart and helped to revive the project.
“The city has done a terrible job of letting people know this project is going forward,” he said. “I’m saying that they restarted the project after they passed this ordinance. I would be happy to see how much the original assessment for traffic mitigation was.”
Wal-Mart hasn’t been given any special breaks on paying traffic fees to spur on development of the new store, Hirashima said.
“All the approvals have been in place since 2006, and it has been a matter of when Wal-Mart wanted to go forward,” she said.
Wal-Mart has paid nearly $900,000 in traffic-impact fees required by the city and by Snohomish County for the store in Marysville, said Delia Garcia, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. Wal-Mart is also required to pay approximately $3.5 million in fees for off-site road improvements that include Highways 9 and 528 and surrounding intersections.
“There is a significant impact that Wal-Mart is making in the community with the store as well as with the infrastructure improvements and traffic mitigation fees,” Garcia said.
In April, the city found Costco, at 16616 Twin Lakes Ave., was eligible for a refund of half the traffic-impact fees the business paid in 2006. The store is in a local improvement district where property owners are responsible for paying half the cost of an I-5 overpass at 156th Street, near the Lakewood Crossing shopping center. Costco agreed to have the refunded money go toward their part of paying for the project.
The city’s law allows for new businesses that bring $200,000 in sales tax revenue over their first three years of operation to apply for a refund of 50 percent of their traffic-impact fee, Hirashima said. Two businesses, Target and Costco, have qualified for the refund, Hirashima added. The agreement did not affect Wal-Mart’s responsibility to pay traffic-impact fees now, but the retailer could apply for the refund after it has been open for three years.
The new Walmart store will be approximately five miles from a Walmart on 34th Avenue NE in Tulalip and about 10 miles from another store that opened last year on 172nd Street in Arlington.
The Monroe City Council in April decided to allow a Walmart to be built at the North Kelsey Street area. A group of people living in and around the area filed an appeal of the decision in Snohomish County Superior Court.
Amy Daybert: 425-339-3491; adaybert@heraldnet.com.
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