A Wal-Mart grocery store will not be built along W.Va. 34 in Putnam County, a judge ruled Friday.
The Putnam County Board of Zoning Appeals, in July, granted Wal-Mart a special permit to build a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in Teays Valley. However, Circuit Judge John Cummings, on Friday, sided with a group of residents who said the development would cause traffic and safety issues in a nearby residential area.
Plans to build the grocery store, which is considerably smaller than a Wal-Mart Supercenter, cannot go forward. Wal-Mart can reapply for the permit, although the company would have to start the process over again.
"This cancels it, unless they come back and go from scratch," said Jennifer Martone, a spokeswoman for Keep the Promise Coalition, a group of residents who appealed the zoning board's decision.
Members of the group, which Martone said numbers at least 100, are relieved.
"I know the majority of the community didn't want that big of a store in the area," Martone said. "Traffic is congested enough. It would have just been horrible."
The Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market would have been located on a parcel on Teays Valley Road, about a half-mile west of Teays Lane, and near the Fox Run housing development. The grocery store would have been 43,000 square feet, which is smaller than most Kroger stores in the region.
Locals argued that the store was too big and would have complicated an already congested traffic flow.
"That large of a building and store would have caused safety issues," Martone said.
If Wal-Mart reapplies for a permit and tries to build the grocery store as originally proposed, Martone said, locals will continue to oppose it.
"As long as they keep it at 43,000 square feet, we don't want it," she said.
The group's appeal, filed in Putnam Circuit Court in August, said the Putnam County Board of Zoning Appeals wrongly relied on an inadequate traffic study when it granted Wal-Mart the permit to build the grocery store. The appeal asked the court to review and reverse that decision.
The appeal was granted Friday during a court hearing in Winfield.
"We're very happy they went through and reviewed everything," Martone said.
A clerk in Putnam Circuit Court said the judge's order wouldn't be ready Friday.
A call to Mike Cassel, a lawyer who represented Keep the Promise Coalition, was not returned Friday afternoon.
Wal-Mart asked for a special permit for the store last February. There were several neighborhood hearings in which area residents came out in droves to oppose the development.
Reach Samuel Speciale at sam.speciale@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-7939 or follow @samueljspeciale on Twitter.