Wal-Mart specially designed for mountain town

The Wal-Mart Supercenter opening Wednesday in Woodland Park is not your basic, boring big box.

The store’s browns and greens blend into the mountain landscape behind it, with timber and stone elements adding to a lodgelike atmosphere. Decorative shepherd hook lights illuminate the parking lot, and a life-size brass statue of a mule deer buck will greet shoppers.

Even some opponents to Wal-Mart’s presence in Woodland Park sprinkle a bit of praise on the design.

“It’s not as pretty as having elk wintering there and horses there all the time, but if you have to have a Wal-Mart, I guess this isn’t a bad-looking one,” said Roy Dickover, one of the leaders of a citizens group that quickly arose in opposition when Wal-Mart unveiled plans for a Woodland Park store three years ago.

The store’s mountain feel was dictated by design standards that are part of Woodland Park’s municipal code, said Joe Napoleon, who until recently was the city’s planning director. He now is executive director of the Woodland Park Downtown Development Authority.

“It’s not just saying ‘I want this because I want it,’” he said. “It’s ‘I need this because the municipal code says that you guys have to get there.’”

It’s common for Wal-Mart to work with a community in such fashion, said Josh Phair, a regional spokesman for the retail giant.

“We obviously have to work within a budget and a business model, but when we can meet everybody’s expectations and kind of create a store that fits the community, then we see it as a win-win.”

Wal-Mart will bend only so far, though. The company last year scrapped plans for a Supercenter in a southeast Colorado Springs neighborhood after city planners said the big-box store would need to be broken up into smaller buildings.

In Woodland Park’s case, “it required some back and forth for a while just to land on the common spot,” Napoleon said. “But I’ll tell you, the representatives they had were very nice to work with.”

The new Supercenter is about 40,000 square feet smaller than those in Colorado Springs. That smaller size fits the Woodland Park market, Wal-Mart officials said.

“There were some who said, ‘Do we really need a Supercenter?’ and ‘They are way too big,’ so we were glad to see they scaled it down for the market,” Napoleon said.

Napoleon negotiated the removal of the word “Supercenter” from the store’s signage. It would have distracted from the architectural features and wasn’t needed, he said. “Everybody knows you’re a Supercenter,” he told Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart was less willing to lose wording that said “We Sell for Less.”

“That became a negotiating point,” Napoleon said. If Wal-Mart had to lose that wording, then city planners would lose their push for the brass mule deer sculpture.

“It took me all of three seconds to say, you know, I can live with ‘We Sell for Less.’”

Overall, he said, “we are very pleased, and we hope Wal-Mart is, too.”

The mountain theme doesn’t continue inside the store. “The inside will look pretty much like your typical Wal-Mart,” Phair said.

Dickover, of the disbanded Citizens for Responsible Growth, said it’s unlikely he’ll ever step foot inside. He’s not opposed to Wal-Mart per se, but thinks any big-box store would be inappropriate for the area. And he’s unhappy with how city leaders handled discussions with Wal-Mart.

“It was a done deal long before they went public,” he said.

Peggy Harris said that if she shops at Wal-Mart, it will be in Colorado Springs — not at the Woodland Park store, which is about a half-mile from her home. She’s not happy about having a Supercenter practically at her front door, Harris said, adding that Woodland Park leaders ignored her and neighbors’ protests.

“People will be there at all times of the night,” she complained.

She’s not soothed by the store’s appearance. “It doesn’t fit in,” she said.

But Steve Vance, who lives near Woodland Park, finds the store “aesthetically pleasing.” He’s excited that the new store will mean fewer trips down Ute Pass to Colorado Springs.

“It’s going to save me a lot of gas,” he said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0272 or bill.radford@gazette.com.