More than three years after the Santa Fe City Council approved a Wal-Mart Supercenter during an all-night public hearing, the project awaits a state Court of Appeals decision.

But despite the pending appeal, a national economic slowdown and a corporate scaling back of expansion plans, Wal-Mart says it's still interested in opening a new Santa Fe store on the booming southwestern end of town.

"There's no change," said Delia Garcia, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart in Arizona and New Mexico. "We're still committed to the project ... especially in that location."

In June 2007, the nation's largest retailer announced it would open only 190 to 200 Supercenter stores that year — down from the 265 to 270 that were originally planned. But, Garcia said, the proposed Santa Fe store is one of those that survived Wal-Mart formula based on economic conditions.

The existing Wal-Mart at 3251 Cerrillos Road is one of only three general-merchandise "discount stores" in New Mexico — compared to 31 Supercenters, which devote at least 30 percent of their square footages to groceries, and two Albuquerque "neighborhood stores," carrying mostly groceries. Garcia said Supercenters are Wal-Mart's preferred commercial vehicle these days, in New Mexico and elsewhere.

Despite the recent Wall Street crisis, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s stock traded at nearly $60 per share this week — up 30 percent from a year ago. Garcia attributed that to more shoppers finding value in "one-stop shopping" at Wal-Mart in hard economic times.

Wal-Mart has opened Supercenters in Española and Las Vegas, N.M., over the last decade, but an attempt to build Supercenter in Taos were stifled about 2005. The company subsequently remodeled the Taos store.

Santa Fe first learned it might get a Wal-Mart Supercenter in 2005 when William Herrera, a retired dentist whose family had developed land for Santa Fe Place mall in the early 1980s, announced plans for 265,000 square feet of commercial space on 33 acres he owns between Cerrillos Road and the Tierra Contenta housing development.

The Tierra Entrada complex would be anchored by the Wal-Mart Supercenter of 149,986 square feet — just under the threshold for Santa Fe's "big box" regulations. Herrera's partners in the project originally were Frontera Development of Phoenix and Steve Johnson Development of Albuquerque and Scottsdale, Ariz. Johnson Development subsequently dropped out.

After several initial balks, the Santa Fe City Council finally got around to hearing the development plan on Aug. 15, 2005, in front of 500 people at the Santa Fe High School gymnasium. But the Tierra Entrada hearing didn't even begin until 11:30 p.m. following long hearings over two other hot-button issues — the local minimum wage and affordable-housing quotas.

Councilors deadlocked 4-4 at least three times over the Tierra Entrada case before then-Councilor David Pfeffer was allowed to change his vote in a controversial parliamentary maneuver at 4:30 a.m. the next day. That resulted in then-Mayor Larry Delgado breaking the tie to approve the development plan pending approval of a traffic plan a month later. Many left confused about what had happened.

After the traffic plan was approved, a group of 22 local business owners called the Coalition Against Big Box Stores, appealed the City Council decision to District Court. They claimed Pfeffer, who has since left town, had been allowed improperly to change his vote, and the city attorney at the time, Bruce Thompson, who also has left town, improperly advised the councilors by telling them they could only consider land-use issues — not economic or environmental ones.

All First Judicial District judges disqualified themselves from hearing the case, so it was assigned to state District Judge Freddie Romero of Roswell. In March 2007, Romero upheld the City Council's decision. The plaintiffs appealed to the state Court of Appeals, arguing Romero failed to recognize the limitations imposed on the councilors by Thompson's advice behind closed doors. The defendants responded that the city attorney's advice was not binding, that the lawsuit improperly seeks to scrutinize the city councilors' "mental processes" and that the "so-called 'secret limitation' (again, hardly a 'secret') was raised at least three times during the public hearing."

The 10-judge appellate court has held the case for more than a year. On Aug. 1, a three-judge panel (Michael Bustamante, Celia Foy Castillo and Cynthia Fry) assigned the case withdrew without a decision. A new panel has yet to be assigned the case and a shortage of appellate judges (Ira Robinson has retired and Joseph Alarid and Lynn Pickard are due to retire by the end of the year) could mean further delays.

Patrick Casey, an attorney for the Coalition Against Big Box Stores, said the shift in the panel doesn't signal anything. "They might have too much caseload," he said.

Nancy Long, an attorney for Herrera, said she expects the case to be submitted to a new panel soon. The only work on the property so far, she said, was the grading of a dirt road last year.

The former project manager, Tom Keesing of the Santa Fe Agency, said Friday that he has not done any work for the developers for almost two years.

"That case isn't crystal clear, so it's really going to be pretty interesting how those appeals judges rule on it," he said. "I don't know if there's any law that supports either side. ... If the major retail had gone on, I might have gotten re-engaged and done some more work for the project, but right now, the retail world is playing golf and waiting for the world economy to either crash or heal."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.