Littleton – Registered voters in Littleton will mail in ballots about whether to rescind zoning for a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter on South Sante Fe Drive.
The ballots will be counted and results announced on June 19, the City Council decided Tuesday night.
The council granted zoning for the new Wal-Mart store in January on a 4-3 vote. Before that meeting, the city planning department had received 1,314 public comments in favor of Wal-Mart and 151 against it.
While the Wal-Mart site is in a commercial corridor along South Santa Fe Drive, opponents argue that the 24-hour store is next door to neighborhoods and South Platte Park.
The city has pledged a 10-acre buffer between the store and the park.
In a similar vote in Westminster in 2005, voters sided with Wal-Mart. The retailer put $150,000 into the Westminster campaign, while the store’s opponents spent $30,000, most of it from the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which is now assisting Littleton opponents.
Wal-Mart has won 12 of 16 local ballot initiatives nationwide since 1993, including six of seven in 2005.
