Littleton – Wal-Mart opponents assembled peacefully at Littleton City Center on Monday night, a week after being told to remove their “Littleton Against Wal-Mart” T-shirts at a zoning board meeting or risk jail.
Monday night they handed out shirts in the lobby, and no one was arrested.
“The whole thing was meaningless, grandstanding,” said Jeff Jones, a Littleton resident who supports the Wal-Mart. “But the city played it about as dumb as it could be played, over T-shirts.”
After threats of a free-speech lawsuit, the city backed off an administrative rule imposed before last week’s meeting to quiet boisterous anti-Wal-Mart activists, city officials said.
Mayor Jim Taylor stepped in, saying that arresting residents for T-shirts took the safety rule too far.
With a half-dozen police officers looking on, everyone was orderly and polite Monday night.
The rule put broad power in the hands of town managers, said Bob Hoban, a lawyer for Littleton Against Wal-Mart.
“There seems to be no reason to curb free speech, when there’s no credible threat of a riot,” he said, referring to the parents and grandparents who made up most of the local Wal-Mart bloc. “It’s hard for me to fathom these people would even be capable of that, much less be profiled as that.”
The constitutional battle spun out of a zoning request for a new supercenter on South Santa Fe Drive. While in a heavily commercial area, the site is bordered by homes and South Platte Park.
Residents said the 24-hour business is out of step with their community and bound to disturb area residents. The supercenter is slated for 187,000 square feet and 900 parking spaces.
“We didn’t set aside South Platte Park in the 1970s to have this kind of development spoil it,” said resident Larry Border.
Not everyone in the neighborhood takes that position, however. The Wal-Mart is expected to generate $2 million in sales taxes annually, creating 350 jobs, including 270 full-time positions.
Candace Reed, a 30-year Littleton resident, supports the store and said opponents go too far.
“Because of the vehement expression by the Littleton Against Wal-Mart crowd, it is very intimidating to attend the meeting tonight and face the antipathy for expressing an opposing view,” she said Monday.
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
