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Letters to the Editor

Oak Ridge should finish mall first

3/12/2007

To the Editor:

If a Target superstore is to be the salvation of Oak Ridge, why hasn't the city talked to Wal-Mart at its corporate headquarters about the restrictive covenant the local Wal-Mart has in the Downtown Shopping Center?

It makes a lot more sense to help establish the project already begun Downtown than it does to go off on a tangent with another developer.

If I understand correctly, the idea of actually going to Arkansas to discuss this was suggested to the city about a year and a half ago, about the time Target expressed interest in building in front of the Energy Museum.

It is hard to understand why this was not done.

Wal-Mart and Target are both in Turkey Creek, and they both seem to be prospering. Actually, they each attract a different set of customers, with Target's prices being higher.

The City Council might want to remember that thoughtful citizens did not want Crown America to build a mall because they preferred the openness of Downtown, and they thought Crown America was too ambitious in its predictions.

Thoughtful citizens, in the current rush to take on another developer who uses market surveys, etc., instead of talking to people who live here, may not want a developer who insists that Illinois Avenue is the only place to build, no matter what it does to traffic, or what it looks like up on the hill. GBT doesn't seem to know that downtown was patronized by people from outside Oak Ridge, who had no trouble finding it.

The city itself says that Rarity Ridge shoppers are already lost to the new shopping area planned in Lenoir City. Will shoppers from Kingston turn off the Interstate before they reach Campbell Station Road? One wonders. Of course, if they come by way of Highway 58, they could easily reach Downtown.

The City Council seems to view having this new development as the city's last resort. Is it? Isn't it more reasonable to make possible the completion of the already-begun shopping area project in Downtown?

Virginia M. Jones

Oak Ridge

http://www.oakridger.com/stories/031207/opi_155655983.shtml