Big Bad Box, I'm the lady that Troy mentioned. My neighborhood's fight with Wal Mart started in April of 1999. The first city council meeting ended in an agreement amongst city council members that both sides should learn more about the negotiation and come back later, more "learned". We were the last topic on the agenda. We went home around midnight... it seemed. The fight against Wal Mart dragged on for a long time.
My husband, toddler daughter and I passed out fliers against Wal Mart, which were paid for by ourselves as well as a few other neighbors. Each street that we got farther away from the intended site, the stronger the support for Wal Mart became since they didn't want to have to drive 8 miles to get to the nearest Super Wal Mart. (We've already got 5 Wal Marts within 15 miles, so we didn't need another one, though our city council pointed out that OUR CITY didn't have one! Grrr...)
Wal Mart mailed out their propaganda through a band of some of our neighbors who called themselves something like "a concerned group of citizens for economic growth"... translation... they had paid advertisement for their side paid by Wal Mart.
My family and I weren't within the 100 ft (we're within 200 ft...), so we couldn't vote either for or against Wal Mart. However, we rallied behind those who were, who were against Wal Mart. About a third of those, who were within the 100 ft, were mostly renters with property owners living elsewhere. A third of those within 100 ft were citizens in the next city over who weren't allowed to vote on this issue since it wasn't in their city. The final third of those within 100 ft, who did own property and lived there were divided. Half of them wanted the Wal Mart since the "concerned citizens group for economic growth" was spreading rumors that the city would build low-income housing there immediately if the Wal Mart was not built. It took a lot of struggling to get that half to believe that it was a rumor and that it wasn't zoned for low-income housing. It was a tough battle with neighbor against neighbor. All but two of the city council people lived on the other side of the highway, so it seemed hard for them to take concern on our case it not being in their back yards... it would have been in my front yard.
Before the next city council meeting occurred (September 1999), our neighborhood homeowners' association had had time to triple in size and work on defending ourselves in a polite manner at the city council meeting.
The thing that clenched the vote against Wal Mart (5 against and 2 for) was the fact that the Wal Mart attorney and the property owner hadn't discussed who would repave the parking lot of the existing stores in the retail space. The property owner is the mayor of a nearby city with higher property value than ours, so it seemed like a slap in the face that he would invite Wal Mart into our neighborhood when his city has a very strict building code. He inherited the property from his father, and, as the executor to his father's will, wanted to get rid of the property instead of paying taxes on it. The property was supposed to have had houses built on it 30 years ago, however, the development had not been finished. The Super Wal Mart would have had single family houses on the west side of the property (no street in between, just an alleyway) and rental duplexes on the south side separated by a street... retail to the north and to the east... another city (apartments and retail mixed).
The verdict of the September city council meeting was that Wal Mart could not propose another Wal Mart there within the next year. Nothing happened in 2000, however, recently, a Wal Mart "Neighborhood Market" popped up on vacant land next to a mostly empty shopping strip... surrounded by houses. I never heard a peep about it.
About your other question, there had been a Wal Mart down the street from the intended new Super Wal Mart. It had been closed down about 4 1/2 years ago. It finally got filled a few years ago by a Home Depot. It astounded a lot of us why Wal Mart would have wanted to move in to a smaller property and have a larger store when the one they vacated had been "too small" for a regulary Wal Mart store.
During the time in between the city council meetings, the Wal Mart attorney and his team kept revising their blue prints adding more trees. That was their only concession to us. Wal Mart "promised" not to deliver goods by truck after midnight and not before 6am. Ridiculous! I could go on...
Good luck against them!