ATLANTA-Wal-Mart Stores Inc., no stranger to confrontations over development plans with activist residential groups across the country, is scheduled to meet Fulton County board of commissioners in Fulton County Superior Court in mid-February. A prime 43-acre site in the Cascade Road neighborhood of southwest Fulton is at the center of the three-year battle.

The legal fight is over Fulton County's restricting a rezoned 43-acre commercial site to a retail building no larger than 55,000 sf, county staffers confirm for GlobeSt.com. Wal-Mart wants to build a $10-million, 185,000-sf building on the site owned by Delta Cascade Partners III and headed by long-time area developer Doug Crawford

After withdrawing development plans for the store in December 2003, Crawford won a rezoning tiff with the county in 2004. However, the county's size restriction meant Wal-Mart still couldn't build its store, area brokers who have followed the ongoing battle tell GlobeSt.com.

The county's legal staff maintains Wal-Mart can still build a profitable operation in a 55,000-sf store. The 17,000-member Sandtown Community Association, made up of 27 neighborhood groups, is backing the county in the fight. The parties are asking Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. to settle the dispute.

In neighboring, DeKalb County, the Bentonville, AR-based retailer still has its eye on a 23-acre tract it owns at the shuttered Avondale Mall. County officials previously rejected Wal-Mart's plan to have the mall area rezoned for commercial uses and annexed into the small Atlanta suburb of Avondale Estates, as GlobeSt.com reported Dec. 21, 2004. The annexation would have allowed Wal-Mart to build a $15-million, 203,000-sf supercenter.

County staffers confirm for GlobeSt.com the county has now approved a special tax district to improve certain commercial districts along Memorial Drive, including the Avondale Mall site. That could allow Wal-Mart to become part of the area's planned redevelopment, DeKalb brokers and marketers familiar with the year-long controversy tell GlobeSt.com.