Attention Wal-Mart foes and fans: Pace yourselves. It could be a long fight.


City of Spokane officials say Wal-Mart Stores Inc. must go through many steps before its proposed 186,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter at the northeast corner of 44th Avenue and Regal Street, on the South Hill, gains regulatory approval. They say the same thing about the 153,000-square-foot Sams Club the giant retailer has proposed at the northeast corner of Lincoln Road and Nevada Street, on the North Side.


Protesters packed an initial traffic-impact meeting that Wal-Mart held on the proposed South Hill project recently, and city staff members expected a similar reception from neighborhood residents at a meeting scheduled earlier this week on the proposed Sams Club project.


The citys staff is quick to point out, however, that the steps Wal-Mart will go through are the same steps that any company would have to endure when proposing such big projects.


We need to follow the rules and treat like applicants alike, says John Pilcher, the citys economic development director.


While the neighborhood meeting on the South Hill proposal occurred before the Sams Club meeting, the North Side project is a little farther along in the regulatory process. Leroy Eadie, a city planning manager, says the South Hill meeting wasnt required by the city, but Wal-Mart conducted it in anticipation that a traffic study will be required.


For the Sams Club project, CLC Associates Inc. has applied for a short-plat approval to convert the 20-acre site to three parcels from four, says Eadie. Also, Wal-Mart has applied for a building permit for the store building there.


The city has determined that Wal-Marts short-plat application is complete and has routed the application to 25 departments and agencies within the city, county, and state, Eadie says. Those departments and agencies have two weeks from when they receive the proposal to analyze it and ask the developer for additional information if its needed. At the same time, the county will run a concurrency review to determine whether existing infrastructure is adequate.


Once the city receives all of those comments, it will combine them in a letter that will be sent to the applicant. Commonly, a traffic study and geotechnical study would be needed, Eadie says.


The applicant will answer the questions, and the departments will determine whether it has done so adequately.


Once all questions are answered, the city will take written comments during a 15-day public-comment period, then will decide whether to approve it. That entire process can take anywhere from a month to six months, Eadie says.


The proposed South Hill project also is going through the short-plat process. Eadie says the city determined late last month that the short-plat application for that project is complete.


Wal-Mart hasnt applied for a building permit on the South Hill project yet, but it has applied for a building permit for the North Side Sams Club, and a traffic study is under way for that project, says Tom Craig, a city building department plans examiner.


A State Environmental Policy Act checklist is required on all building projects that include more than 12,000 square feet of floor space or more than 40 new parking spaces.


For both projects, before a building permit would be issued, plans will be reviewed by city departments. The entire process can take from two weeks to several months, Craig says.