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If the choice was between building walkable, transit-oriented development and Costco than I'd certainly take the former over the latter. But it's not. ItÂ’s between an empty parking lot and derelict department store and Costco. So, while IÂ’m no great fan of the place, IÂ’ll take Costco.

To be clear, the $4M is not going to Costco, it's going to Westfield to be put towards the $50 that will be required to accommodate the new stores. (2 other stores yet to be named are also part of this plan.) It's blackmail for sure, but it's a ransom that gets paid elsewhere in the county all the time so why not Wheaton?

In the short term Wheaton needs this and in the grand scheme of things $4M is not a ton of money. So I hope the council sees this. And 475 new decent jobs is nothing to sneeze at in this economy.

In the long term rezone the mall to CR Zone (as proposed in the new sector plan) so that down the road we can have this conversation again and it might be more than hypothetical that something human scale gets built.

And approve the Safeway plans to build in the downtown. Whether the Safeway/Patriot redevelopment happens will have much greater impact on the mom and pop stores downtown and the long term fate of Wheaton than this Costco sideshow.

by dave on Jan 20, 2010 5:14 pm • link • report