BANGOR – Despite traffic concerns raised by its future neighbors, the nation’s largest retailer received the city’s approval Monday night to build a 209,000-square-foot store off Stillwater Avenue.

Slated to open in the spring of 2008, the Wal-Mart Supercenter would replace an existing 114,000-square-foot store less than a mile away on Springer Drive. The project is expected to cost $23.6 million, according to company officials.

With the city’s approval under its belt, Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust now is awaiting state environmental and traffic movement permits, members of Wal-Mart’s development team said during a special meeting of the city’s planning board at City Hall.

The planning board’s votes to grant site development plan approval for the overall project and conditional use approval for a proposed garden center followed a marathon meeting.

Neither decision was unanimous, with members voting 3-2 to approve the conditional use aspect of the application and 4-1 on the overall site plan.

The 41/2-hour meeting involved testimony from more than two dozen people, including project supporters and foes, several attorneys and what one city administrator called “dueling traffic consultants.”

While environmental concerns were raised, traffic concerns dominated the discussion.

As proposed, the main access to the Supercenter will be from Stillwater Avenue. With the Supercenter projected to bring about 550 vehicles an hour to the busy Bangor Mall area during its weekly peak hours, namely early Saturday afternoons, the owners of other commercial developments in the project area, including the Crossroads Mall, are worried that if traffic backs up, access to their stores will be cut off.

A majority of planning board members, however, thought that the nearly $3 million in improvements the developer must make along Stillwater Avenue as a condition of its state traffic movement permit will go a long way toward mitigating any adverse effects.

Not everyone was convinced.

“I think this issue tonight is about traffic,” said board member Miles Theeman, who cast the sole opposing vote against granting site plan approval.

The Supercenter is slated to be built on a 50-acre site off Stillwater Avenue behind the Blue Seal Feeds store.

The Supercenter would be reached by an access road adjacent to Crossroads Mall. If all goes according to plan, the new store will open in spring of 2008.

That was not, however, the top choice for city officials and the owners of commercial property near the Wal-Mart site, who had hoped to find a way to compel Wal-Mart to instead build an extension to Hogan Road to serve the Supercenter.

A sticking point is that the land needed for the right-of-way is privately held.

Representatives of the Eremita and Valley families, who own the Crossroads Mall, said the families are willing to donate their portion of the right-of-way to the city.

Wal-Mart representatives, however, have not yet been able to negotiate a deal with the owners of the Country Inn, who hold the remaining portion.