Add Flemington and Raritan in Hunterdon County to the locales putting out the unwelcome mat for Wal-Mart and its ilk.

Raritan’s mayor and a group of local citizens oppose a developer’s plan to bring big-box retailers into what they see as an area already saturated with stores. Opponents worry that small retailers will be driven out of business and that green space will be lost.

These two towns have plenty of shopping facilities already. Flemington is a nationally known outlet center with dozens of big-name brands represented, including Brooks Brothers, Calvin Klein and Royal Doulton. And 1.7-sq.-mile Flemington is the hole in the donut of Raritan, whose 38 square miles host discount retailers such as BJ’s, Home Depot and Kohl’s.

But Garden Commercial Properties, a Short Hills developer, is eager to build the $75 million retail-dominated Raritan Town Square, a 460,000-sq.-ft. mixed-use facility. It would occupy a 51-acre site owned by Flemington Fair and Speedway, a popular site for auto racing since 1910 and home to the Hunterdon County Fair. Plans are to have Wal-Mart and Lowe’s anchor the center and occupy nearly 300,000 sq. ft. The rest of the space is earmarked for offices, smaller retail outlets, green space and parking.

For its part, Wal-Mart – which has two other stores in Hunterdon County – is confident that the region will support more big boxes and predicts that the proposed 142,000-sq.-ft. store will gross some $45 million a year. But the company and the project face pitched resistance.

Jeffrey Marshall, Raritan’s mayor of six months, came into office on an anti-development platform. Marshall prefers smaller-sized stores and wants Garden Commercial to build on lots of 35,000 sq. ft. He says the overall project would still have a rentable area of 470,000 sq. ft. Even less accommodating to Wal-Mart is Beryl Doyle, co-chairperson of Citizens for Parkland. Her group wants the town to buy the site and preserve much of it as a public park, with some commercial and residential development permitted along the fringe. Caught in the crossfire is Richard Kuhl, promoter and general manager of Flemington Fair and Speedway, which has owned the site since the 1940s. Kuhl says television and changing demographics have snatched most of the market for his races, which were last held in 2000.

The fair relocated that year and Kuh’s company closed the facility after piling up $1.5 million in debt. Kuhl says the best option for his company’s 86 shareholders would be to sell the property to the highest bidder, and Garden Commercial is the only buyer in sight.

The Short Hills company is the commercial development arm of Garden Homes, one of the largest privately owned home builders in the state. The firm’s commercial real estate portfolio is dominated by shopping centers totaling 20.7 million sq. ft. nationwide, of which some 9 million sq. ft. are in New Jersey. Office properties comprising roughly 4 million sq. ft., and industrial space of about 1 million sq. ft., make up the rest of the firm’s portfolio.

The Raritan Town Square project would be a natural addition to this portfolio. Market watchers say it could pull in up to $5 million in annual rent. Garden Commercial says the city would rake in more than $1.3 million in taxes a year, some 22 times the $62,000 it now collects on the property. Scott Loventhal, Garden Commercial’s director of development for the Raritan Town Square project, is bracing for this week’s public Planning Board hearing on the development. It will be the fourth hearing so far.

Loventhal says his firm has agreed to most of the recommendations made at hearings over the past three years on the preservation of historic structures and open space. This includes the purchase of an adjacent 10-acre lot to be preserved as green space, and the sparing of about 50 out of 100 oak trees on the site.

“Those are ice cubes to Eskimos,” says Mayor Marshall. He says he gets between four and seven calls a day from retailers and homeowners who don’t want Wal-Mart in town. Concerns include the increased traffic on Route 31, the township’s main drag, which might slow ambulances and other vehicles going to and from the nearby Hunterdon County Medical Center. Loventhal says he has not received one complaint from a homeowner or retailer protesting the proposed development.

“I don’t know if Beryl Doyle can dictate the needs of the marketplace,” he says.

His strongest argument is that the plan conforms to town zoning regulations that were hammered into place two years ago after three years of deliberations. The move changed the site’s industrial zoning into a Planned Commercial Office and Service Zone (PCOS). Doyle wants another change. “I want to eliminate this PCOS zoning and sit down with the township and work out an alternative plan to save the fairgrounds,” she says. “In my utopia, Raritan Township would buy the site for $5.5 million.”

But that plan doesn’t have much firepower yet. Citizens for Parkland has raised $450,000 from the stat’s Green Acres fund and has sought matching contributions from federal agencies to buy the site. That would still leave the group short since Marshall says Raritan doesn’t have the money to chip in, even if it were to acquire the property by eminent domain.

Moreover, site manager Kuhl says $5.5 million is far short of the property’s real value. Garden Commercial’s Loventhal, whose firm has a contract to buy the property, doesn’t want to divulge the agreed-upon price, but market observers speculate that it’s in the neighborhood of $20 million.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart says fears about the impact of its proposed store are overblown.

“The fact that [the area] has so many shopping establishments is indicative that it is a successful market for retailers,” says Mia Masten, Wal-Mart’s community affairs manager for the eastern region. She says independent studies show that Wal-Mart stores create expanded opportunities for existing businesses by increasing foot traffic.

Doyle and Marshall don’t buy that. But Loventhal – whose company has invested about $1 million in the project – remains enthusiastic. Most eager for an early resolution are Kuhl and his shareholders, whose attempts to sell the site to national racetrack operators have run out of gas.