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John “Jack” Helin
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TAB 5
The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, KS)
February 9, 2013
Wal-Mart Project in Shawnee Worries Two Cities. Bonner Springs fears how a project in
nearby Shawnee will affect its store. Meanwhile, some people in Shawnee also are
concerned about the new store’s impact.
Author: Karen Dillon
In Bonner Springs, the Wal-Mart Supercenter makes the town hum. Residents love it. But
construction of a Wal-Mart just seven miles down the road in neighboring Shawnee has Bonner
Springs residents worried that their love affair could end. “It would be awful if Wal-Mart
closed,” said Sophie Deleon-Knapp, a Bonner Springs resident, as she was about to go into the
store recently. “It’s the buzz around town. We are all very concerned.” What a difference those
seven miles make.
In western Shawnee, there’s no love lost for many neighbors for their new store. Residents of the
upscale Grey Oaks subdivision staged an epic battle, spending thousands of dollars on legal fees
and enlisting the help of engineers to try to stop the construction or at least to keep the traffic
from flowing into their neighborhood, but they lost. “There was nothing we could do,” said
Rhonda Befort, who relocated here from Alaska in 2006. Her home and backyard swimming
pool border the construction project. “Had we known what we know now, we would never have
built in this neighborhood,” she said. Wal-Marts are desired by many cities because of the money
they generate.
But neighbors in other parts of the metro have some of the same concerns as in Shawnee. In
Lee’s Summit, a group has formed to protest a supercenter. In Waldo, some neighbors fear traffic
congestion from a proposed Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market. But Wal-Marts also come and go
around the metropolitan area. For example, one of Wal-Mart’s first Hypermarts across from the
now-shuttered Bannister Mall was closed a few years ago with much angst to the Hickman Mills
area, but about the same time a supercenter popped up on Blue Ridge in eastern Kansas City.
Wal-Mart also recently bought property in the Olathe Brentwood Plaza Shopping Center for a
neighborhood market.
Roeland Park residents learned last year that their beloved Wal-Mart is moving to a new location
less than a mile away but across the city’s border into Mission. Wal-Mart officials did not return
phone calls or emails, so it’s difficult to know the future of the Bonner Springs store. But
officials there watched uneasily as a Wal-Mart was opened a couple of years ago at the Legends,
about five miles to the northeast. And when the new western Shawnee Wal-Mart opens later this
year, it will bring the number of supercenters to five near the Kansas 7 corridor.
Bonner Springs residents and officials alike think something has to give because the area may be
too populated with Wal-Marts to be profitable and they fear their store will be closed because it
is the oldest. Already, Bonner Springs officials have budgeted for a drop in income even if it
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