Expert Testimony on Site Impacts
of Proposed Wal-Mart Super-Center
Location: Keene, New Hampshire
Date completed: 0ctober, 1998
Client: City of Keene Planning Board

Dodson Associates, Ltd. provided expert testimony, photographic simulations, alternative plans and written findings to the Keene Planning Board relating their Development Plan Review standards to the impacts of a proposed Wal-Mart Super-Center. The proposed building had a 193,000 square foot floorplan, an approximately 550 foot long main façade. It was proposed to be built on existing open space with serious visual, wetlands and floodplains constraints.

Our firm gave expert testimony in two different Planning Board hearings and prepared a 25 page, illustrated report. Our first major responsibility was to prepare a visual and scenic inventory and an evaluation of the existing site as well as the proposed design. This included inventorying the site's visual features, visual qualities, constraints and landscape contrast as seen from surrounding roads and public vantage points. Following the report, Dodson Associates gave formal legal testimony evaluating potential impacts of the design as proposed on the identified visual resources and on the site's landscape context. The Keene Planning Department also asked for specific recommendations regarding the possible mitigation of identified impacts as well as an analysis of the potential effectiveness of possible mitigation efforts.

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Our firm's second major responsibility was to give oral testimony and accompanying written findings relating to four specific Development Standards that the Planning Board had to make findings on under this special permit process. These included detailed evaluations of the proposed project's 1) Architecture and Visual Appearance - especially as it related to the surrounding viewshed, 2) the project's proposed landscaping, 3) the project's proposed screening relative to abutters and to views from surrounding public ways and 4) the effects of the project's site and parking lot lighting. This evaluation was defensible and extremely technical, but had to be conveyed in away that was easily understood by the general public.

Based on our expert testimony, as well as that of the consulting architect, and extensive public input, the Keene Planning Board denied a special permit for the Wal-Mart plan.