A recent meeting has raised the Wal-Mart specter in Moab, but business leaders say they are taking a "wait-and-see" approach before getting too worried.

Rumors that Wal-Mart is looking at building a new store in the Moab area have picked up since a meeting among Moab and Grand County officials and the state School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration late last month.

Wal-Mart representatives say the company has no immediate plans for a new store in the area, but they are keeping open the possibility that one could come eventually. SITLA officials say developers have twice approached them about using administration land near Moab for a possible Wal-Mart store.

"We don't currently have any plans to build a store in Moab," Wal-Mart regional spokeswoman Karianne Fallow said Tuesday from her office in Boise. "Any growing market is a market of interest for us, and we continue to look all over the country for new ways to serve our customers, so there may come a day. There's nothing on the table now."

New Wal-Marts nationwide have often brought protest from residents who worry the big-box store would hurt local business and a community's image. But Moab officials say the store can be hard to stop, and the more important question may be who will benefit.

"The city believes that if it is inevitable that a Wal-Mart is going to come to the area, the store should be located in the city limits so the city can realize the full benefits," namely sales-tax revenue, city manager Donna Metzler said Tuesday. For Moab, a city that has no property taxes, that's a big deal.

Metzler said the city and Grand County agree that a store should be located within Moab city limits. But neighboring San Juan County, whose border lies just miles away from Moab, may not.

"Yes, we'd be interested," San Juan County planner Evan Lowry said.

Metzler said she worries that San Juan County may aggressively court a new Wal-Mart, which would draw Moab residents out of the city for much of their shopping. "If it gets to a point where it looks like there's some direction toward a Wal-Mart being located within San Juan County, I think we would step in."

After a real-estate broker purporting to represent Wal-Mart twice approached SITLA about its land, SITLA's assistant director over development, Ric McBrier, said he asked for the June 30 meeting to inform local government leaders. SITLA has extensive landholdings in Grand and San Juan counties.

Local business leaders aren't ruling out the possibility of a fight, but they want to see what happens before reacting to the idea of Wal-Mart-sized competition.

"We're still kind of taking a wait-and-see attitude and kind of letting this thing percolate," Moab Area Chamber of Commerce vice president Phil Mueller said Tuesday.

Ken Turner, owner of Moab's Ace Hardware/Turner Lumber store, said he doubts Wal-Mart is Moab-bound any time soon, and he isn't worried.

"I just see it as a way-out-in-the-future type of thing," he said. "It would be a concern for the community, sure, but at this point in time I don't have any concerns."

Even so, Metzler said businesses and residents may eventually push against any plans for a Wal-Mart. "There are some people who live here who feel like a Wal-Mart would take away from the kind of small-town rural character of the town."

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