TEGA CAY--It is unlikely the 14 demands the City Council placed on Wal-Mart via a proposed amendment to the Stonecrest development agreement will be deal-killers.

"We'll have an agreement with Tuttle, and he in turn will have an agreement with Wal-Mart," said Councilman Larry Harper, referring to Bryan Tuttle, Stonecrest's developer.

"We need to have a way that the conditions we want are tied together with his deal with Wal-Mart and are enforceable."

Other towns have had similar negotiations with the world's largest retailer and walked away satisfied. For example, the Wal-Mart on Hilton Head Island can't even be seen from the road in front of it.

"Typically they (Wal-Mart) want to do a cookie-cutter kind of thing," said Charles Cousins, with the Town of Hilton Head Planning Department. "But if you keep pressing them enough, you can pretty much get them to go along with you."

Cousins said tight development standards help communities get a suitable alternative out of a company as large as Wal-Mart. Setbacks and buffer requirements have made a huge difference for Hilton Head, he said.

"They didn't come in first blush with what we wanted," Cousins said. "But if you have community standards and press them, you can get what you want."

Broomfield Colo. is another town that sent Wal-Mart back to the drawing board after the company's first proposal didn't fit with the rest of the commercial development at that site, said Kevin Stanbridge, a Broomfield city/county government planner .

Broomfield is a suburb of Denver, with a median income similar to the Fort Mill Township. Also like the Township, the majority of the residents are college educated and working in white collar or technical jobs, Stanbridge said.

The overall look of the commercial development that Wal-Mart wanted to be a part of was very important to the city, Stanbridge said. The site was already set up for a big box retailer, so environmental and traffic issues had already been accounted for, he said. The only problem Wal-Mart had was complying with the look of the development.

Wal-Mart agreed to use materials consistent to the rest of the development on the exterior of its store, Stanbridge said. The city hired an architect to work on its behalf with Wal-Mart to meet the standards of the rest of the commercial center.

"Wal-Mart was very willing to work with us," Stanbridge said. "It was a pleasant surprise because the company had had some bad publicity in Colorado just before coming to us."

Similarly, Wal-Mart proposes to match the rest of the Stonecrest Development with its "Store of the Community" theme.