FORT MILL TOWNSHIP--The proposed Wal-Mart supercenter would impact all of the township, but no one so much as the people who'd live right next to it.

The neighbors

Robert Finlayson has lived near the corner of Dam Road and Hwy. 160 West for 33 years. He also rents out two trailers on the road. He thinks a Wal-Mart would do wonders for the area, and he doesn't understand other neighbors' opposition.

"Those people raising all that fuss in Tara Plantation [have] been coming out of Old Tara for 25 years looking at a junkyard, and now they don't want to look at a Wal-Mart?" Finlayson asks.

Most of the people he knows who live nearby support a Wal-Mart locating in Stonecrest, he says.

"What we're hearing from now is dissenters," he says.

Finlayson is also not worried about developers clear-cutting and leveling the land to build the 203,000-square-foot superstore.

"All I've ever seen is three or four squirrels and a few rabbits," he says of the wildlife on the undisturbed land sitting behind his property.

"Look at what it's going to replace," he says. "There are two old trailer parks - they're more than 50 years old - on this street and below that is a junkyard. So I don't know what everybody's problem is."

Gene Sloan lives in one of those trailers on Dam Road. He says the most outspoken opponents of Wal-Mart are the very reason the mega-retailer is interested in this area. He would much rather see a Wal-Mart than more homes.

"It's all these damn Yankees bitching, 'We don't want a Wal-Mart,'" he says. "If it wasn't for all them moving here we wouldn't need the Wal-Mart."

Sloan remembers growing up in Fort Mill when it was a small town. He says he knew every one of the 1,200 or so people who once lived here. Now he says there is no way to know everybody.

"The people fussing about Wal-Mart, you can bet they shop there, too," Sloan says. "I'll bet you $50."

Worrying about Wal-Mart attracting more crime to the neighborhood is pointless, he says.

"This is Dam Road. Ain't no reason to worry about crime, it's already here," he says.

The displaced

Neither Finlayson nor Sloan live on the 15 acres that Wal-Mart and The Tuttle Co. need to build the superstore.

The residents who would be shoved out by Wal-Mart, the people who rent trailers in the two parks that Finlayson mentions, have a different view than Finlayson or Sloan.

Some of them have lived in the trailer parks for as long as 25 years. They can't afford housing elsewhere, and they don't want to be forced to move.

Some tenants keep neat yards and small gardens in front of their homes. One family built a white picket fence around their yard and a stone path leading to their front door. They said they were opposed to the Wal-Mart supercenter because they do not want to move.

One resident has two trailers on the land, living in one and renting the other. He does not want to move, either. The trailer park has been his home for the past six years.

"I don't want to have to move these things out of here," he said. "I won't be able to put them anywhere else in York County. They're close to 50 years old, and in this area everything has to be new now."

If the Wal-Mart deal is approved, these people would be forced out from their homes.

The landowner's view

Dean Crisp owns the 15 acres that Wal-Mart and The Tuttle Co. need to build the supercenter at the corner of Dam Road and Hwy. 160 West.

Crisp is willing to sell his land to The Tuttle Co., the developer of Stonecrest and the architect of the Wal-Mart deal, and he hopes the money would help his children.

"Our kids will get whatever we do get for the land," he said.

But, Crisp added, he's fed up with the developer and the whole process.

In his first proposal, Bryan Tuttle told Crisp he wanted the tenants off the land within 30 days after the deal closed. Crisp objected and pushed that timeframe back to 90 days, Crisp said.

Crisp also does not want to ask for annexation into Tega Cay himself. Annexation and rezoning are necessary before the Wal-Mart deal could be finalized, since the land isn't yet part of Stonecrest's commercial area.

The negotiations haven't been easy, Crisp says.

In one meeting Crisp had with Tuttle, he says, he got fed up and started to leave. Tuttle followed him outside in the rain, without an umbrella, asking him not to walk away from the offer.

Tuttle declined to comment on his contract with Crisp, saying only that there was a willing seller and a willing buyer in the deal and he expects it to go through.