By MEG LANDERS
Mail Tribune

Medford’s site review committee Friday stuck by an earlier decision not to require Wal-Mart to do a comprehensive traffic study before building a supercenter on the former site of Miles Field.

A local citizens group says it will appeal the decision.

"I was personally disappointed," said Wendy Siporen, a member of Medford Citizens for Responsible Development and a councilwoman in Talent.

"None of the Site Plan and Architectural Commission members had the courage to stand up for the future of Medford," she said.

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Wal-Mart plans to build a 205,693-square-foot store on a 19.5-acre site between Center Drive and Highway 99.

The commission determined that Wal-Mart can proceed without a comprehensive study detailing the new store’s effect on traffic.

The decision is the latest of several hearings about the project, which the site plan commission approved but the City Council rejected in 2004. Wal-Mart appealed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, which returned the issue to the council, which sent it back to the commission.

The site, architectural and landscape portion of a revised Wal-Mart Supercenter proposal was approved by the commission in February.

LUBA told the city that it needed to explain more clearly why a new traffic study would not be required of the applicant.

Lori Cooper, senior assistant city attorney, said the council remanded the traffic issue back to the commission with narrow guidelines, including that no new evidence be submitted.

She said evidence has never been presented that shows a comprehensive traffic study is necessary.

"What has been done is adequate," she said. Traffic impacts were studied in 1991, at the time of a zone change. That study had been done by South Gateway Center Partners, property owners near the proposed supercenter site.

"Another comprehensive traffic study was not required at this time," she said.

But South Gateway Center Partners has argued that Wal-Mart does need to conduct a traffic study because the old study is incomplete.

"The impacts of Miles Field being anything but a ballpark have never been studied," said Bob Kaczor, one of the developers with the South Gateway Center Partners.

Kaczor argued that if Wal-Mart did a traffic study and it was determined street improvements were needed, Wal-Mart would foot that bill. Without a study, any necessary street improvements would fall on taxpayers and future developers.

But Greg Hathaway, a Portland attorney representing Wal-Mart, said Kaczor is asking the commission to "treat Wal- Mart differently than it would treat any other applicant under the same circumstances. All we’ve ever asked is to be treated the same."

Cooper told the commission that she interprets the city code to say that requiring a traffic study is discretionary, not mandatory.

During the meeting, Siporen as well as Christine Lachner from the citizens group attempted to speak and turn in additional documentation. Cooper stopped them and said their information was inadmissible because they did not testify in the LUBA hearing and therefore did not have legal standing.

Cooper clarified the legal conclusions from the original decision the commission made two years ago, and the commission adopted her findings.

Following the meeting, Kaczor said he didn’t know yet whether South Gateway Partners would appeal the decision. It had appealed the decision to the council following the approval two years ago.

"We’re interested in seeing that the traffic system work out there," he said.

Siporen said she was disappointed she was not allowed to talk during the meeting.

"You shouldn’t have to be a lawyer to talk to your appointed and elected officials," she said.

The matter will come back to the commission for final approval at a future meeting, and any appeals must be filed within 21 days following final approval, according to Cooper.

Reach reporter Meg Landers at 776-4481 or e-mail mlanders@mailtribune.com.