Wal-Mart's decision to look nearby for a suitable development site comes after Henry County commissioners followed its Planning Commission's recommendation to reject the retailer's proposal, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. The store would have provided Henry County with an estimated $2.5 million in annual property taxes and 450 new jobs, county staffers confirm for GlobeSt.com.

The proposed development site is at Fairview Road and Cook Drive where the roads are one lane in each direction, a major factor in Henry County's decision to kill the project, area brokers who attended the public hearing tell GlobeSt.com. To overcome that objection, Wal-Mart officials offered $1.7 million to widen the roads and improve traffic flow.

The Bentonville, AR-based merchant is used to turndowns for planned new stores in metro Atlanta. In February, for example, Cobb County officials also rejected the retailer's plans for a 330,586-sf, estimated $50-million retail campus that would have housed a 200,000-sf Supercenter and seven two-story office buildings on North Cobb Parkway, near the Paulding and Bartow county boundaries, as Globest.com also previously reported. Wal-Mart would have paid $2.85 million in annual property taxes to Cobb County on that deal.

Wal-Mart's Georgia presence takes in 120 stores, Supercenters, Sam's Clubs and eight distribution centers employing 50,000 workers, according to the company's most recent statistics.