Wal-Mart has "officially dropped" plans to build a store in Manor Township.

That was the word last week from Jason Klipa, the mega-retailer's senior spokesman in Pennsylvania.

The e-mailed message prompted mixed reactions from government officials and citizens who have resisted Wal-Mart for a dozen years, claiming the store could worsen traffic in an already-congested area, boost stormwater runoff and undermine local businesses and quality of life.

By turns, they said, they were floored. Skeptical. Elated.

"It's great news," said Manor Township Manager Barry Smith. "It's a bit of a shocking revelation, quite frankly, because it comes out of nowhere for us."

Or almost nowhere.

In early July, Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust transferred just under 30 acres at Columbia Pike and South Centerville Road to Wal-Mart Realty Co. for $10.

As part of the transaction, according to courthouse records, the company was required to pay a Pennsylvania real estate transfer tax of $68,100 on the $6.8 million property.

Manor Township received $33,000, according to Smith, who said he has been trying to get Wal-Mart to clarify its position ever since.

Wal-Mart is not required to notify anyone of its decisions, said James Cowhey, executive director of the Lancaster County Planning Commission.

If company officials wish, he added, "they may sort of let [the store] die on the vine."

Switching ownership of the site to the chain's realty arm "would be a way for Wal-Mart to market that land," Cowhey added. "Whether they're doing that, I don't know."

Klipa shed no further light last week on Wal-Mart's reason for abandoning the store project, or on the future of the tract.

The land, which adjoins the Woods Edge and Wilshire Hills developments, apparently will remain vacant for the time being.

"I've got to let it sink in a little bit," said Manor supervisors Chairman John May, who ran for office in 2001 on a Wal-Mart opposition platform. "It's been so long. Oh my gosh."

Consuming interest
Wal-Mart's fortunes in Manor have seesawed back and forth for years.

The Bentonville, Ark., retailer won preliminary approval for a 200,000-plus-square-foot supercenter in 1998.

In 2002, however, the Manor Township zoning hearing board denied Wal-Mart's bid for a special exception. In 2003, the company withdrew its application to build.

But Wal-Mart reentered the fray the following year by submitting a voluminous traffic study.

In 2007, still facing stiff opposition, the company scaled back its plans and determined to erect a 99,000-square-foot store.

Also that year, the chain ended a three-year push to site a supercenter in Rapho Township.

Wal-Mart currently operates supercenters on Main Street in Ephrata and at 2034 Lincoln Highway East, Lancaster, along with a smaller store at 2030 Fruitville Pike, Manheim Township.

The proposed Drumore Crossings shopping center at the Buck is widely rumored to include a Wal-Mart.

Jim Huber, the former county commissioner who has headed a citizens charge against the Manor Township proposal since 1997, said he'll be happy about Wal-Mart's reversal when he sees more proof.

"I'm skeptical," said the leader of Friends Against Irresponsible Development. "If they would withdraw it would be good news but there's no record they have withdrawn."

The company's land development application is still on file, Huber pointed out.

Still unresolved, too, is a court appeal in which Wal-Mart challenged development conditions imposed by the planning commission in 2007.

On the other hand, according to Smith, "they don't have to tell us" what they're doing. Axing the project would simply make the legal action moot.

Smith would welcome such a cessation.

He said reviews of Wal-Mart applications over the years have socked the township with more than $117,000 in legal and engineering costs and required countless staff hours and meetings.

What's next for the property is unknown.

Developer William Murry, who sold the site to Wal-Mart for more than $3.7 million, said, "I couldn't tell you if my life depended on it" referring to what Wal-Mart intends to do there.

Wal-Mart bought the land in 2003 and previously optioned it for seven years under an arrangement with the Murry Companies and its development partner, Sher-Wal Inc.

Murry has submitted plans for the future expansion of the Woods Edge development, which sits across South Centerville Road from Wal-Mart's land.

However, he said, he has not studied that acreage with an eye toward developing it himself.

Any new project would have to square with township ordinances for zoning, subdivision and land development, Smith said.

A pullout by Wal-Mart does not leave the township understored, May emphasized.

"I would have loved to have seen something like a small industrial park" go in there and rejuvenate the tax base, which has been strained by burgeoning residential development, the supervisor added.

"I certainly wouldn't object to some commercial undertaking there, but nothing on the scale [Wal-Mart officials] were talking about."