Rural family, developers at Wal-Mart site work together

Living in the shadow of The Great Wall

Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

GRANITE FALLS --Kathy Keller wakes up early every morning to feed apples and hay to the 29 miniature horses she and her husband, Danny, keep on their Caldwell County farm.

Six dogs might be yapping behind her, while a cat or two watch lazily from the back porch and a half-dozen chickens and roosters cluck around a fenced-in portion of the yard.

"It's like you've gone back in time," Kathy Keller said of the family's 42 acres tucked into a secluded valley off U.S. 321. "There are so many leaves, and the holler slips below the highway some ... It's wilderness back here."

That's true, Keller said, even as the land has been leveled to make way for a shopping complex and Wal-Mart Supercenter being built behind their garden, woods, pond and long stretches of pasture.

Here, Caldwell County's economic future and its rural past have collided and are learning to co-exist.

And "the great wall of Wal-Mart," as Danny Keller calls it, is the divider.

On top of the 800-foot, concrete-block retaining wall that towers nearly 50 feet above the Kellers' garden and pond, bulldozers clang, giant trucks haul in loads of construction materials and workers build the 280,000-square-foot shopping center.

But on the other side of the wall, seven cows take refuge in the shade of a juniper tree, snakes slither along the parched fields, raccoons capture and kill poultry during the night, grandkids play with the horses, and dogs trot behind the Kellers when they take walks through the property.

"It looks like two worlds," said 61-year-old Danny Keller, who was raised on the farm and has lived on the property most of his life.

Last spring, a national commercial development company announced that it had bought the land adjacent to the Kellers' property and would transform the rolling hills and woods into a shopping complex and later add single-family homes.

"We were just scared to pieces when Wal-Mart first said they were coming," Kathy Keller, 60, said. "No one would choose to have an industry behind them when they're used to having other houses. But how can you pick up a farm and move it?"

And while news of a new Wal-Mart often brings with it opposition and controversy, the Kellers said none of that has been true in their case. Instead, they said, they are learning to co-exist with economic progress.

The development company has been good to work with, the Kellers said, and has adjusted building plans to accommodate some of their requests. The company rerouted the pipes when the Kellers said they were worried about drainage from the complex and the 1,800-spot parking lot seeping onto the their property.

And the company waited until the blue herons, crane-like birds and their chicks migrated before tearing down the oak trees holding the beach-ball-sized nests and leveling the land.

"There have been no cross words whatsoever," Kathy Keller said. "The privacy is gone, but they've been kind ... and have done everything they possibly could to adjust."

Though construction has caused rush-hour traffic jams and the new complex will increase the flow of cars and trucks near the Kellers' home, they say the congestion isn't a problem.

"The traffic light is a godsend," Kathy Keller said. "It used to take me 10 minutes to get onto the highway (from our driveway). Now it takes me five."

The wall, the Kellers said, is higher than they thought it would be and say it's a relief they can't see the trucks moving across the construction zone or see the buildings.

"We hear the boom, boom, boom. It's a racket," Danny Keller said. "But the wall is so high, we can't see much."

Mostly, the Kellers said, they're sad to see urban sprawl encroaching on the country way of life they've always known.

They've noticed a little more litter -- beer cans and empty chip bags -- at the base of the giant wall, have heard the clanging of construction for months and have noticed that there are more deer, snakes, raccoons, rabbits and other wild animals making their way onto the Keller land.

"They don't have anywhere else to go," Kathy Keller said. "There isn't much land left for them."

They understand the need for progress, she said, but hope that they can keep this sliver of country just as it is for as long as they can.

"Until the last Keller is alive, this will still be a farm," she said. "It's in their blood."


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