Sarasota Livin'

I don't live or work in Newtown so I don't know the "pluse" of the community there ... but I understand the feeling that nothing has happened on a large vacant piece of city-owned city-polluted land for a long time.

That certainly needs to be cleaned up. Seems the Wal-Mart study says it would take way more than the value of the property (even if it were clean) to fix it. -- which would seem to make sense since no one has been able to come up with a better plan.

I wonder what a survey of the residents within a mile of the site would show?

I wonder what a survey of the taxpayers of the whole city would show (since we would have to kick in the extra clean-up money)?

I almost never shop at Wal-Mart I don't really like the big box concept (except maybe Home Depot) -- but I certainly don't like a big piece of a neighborhood sitting polluted (while city owned) for years.

What do you think? Tuesday (at yet another special meeting) we will find out what the City Commission thinks..

I guess I will go out on a limb and say I am 53% YES 47% NO on this issue...

Here is the "What's Up" section of the recent SHT article ...

City commissioners will meet Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. in City Commission chambers, 1565 First St., Sarasota.

They are expected to vote on whether to sell a contaminated 18-acre Newtown property to Wal-Mart for a planned Supercenter.

Deal highlights:

Wal-Mart would pay the city about $4.9 million for the property off U.S. 301 and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

The retailer would then use that money to partially clean up the site, which was used for years as an unofficial town dump.

If the cleanup cost exceeds $4.9 million, which it likely will, Wal-Mart has asked the city to pay an additional $1.7 million.

Groups concerned with Wal-Mart have urged residents to pay close attention to details specifying what kind of benefits Wal-Mart would bring to the community, and whether the retailer could walk away from the deal at any time.