Blacksburg Town Council has no legal right to stop or slow an Ohio developer from building a big-box store widely thought to the be a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Montgomery County judge has ruled.

Circuit Court Judge Bobby Turk notified town officials by letter Friday that he thinks Fairmount Properties and its local partners, Llamas LLC and Diversified Investors LLC, have a right under state law to build a 186,000-square-foot retail store along South Main Street without further governmental regulation.

The council had sought to apply the recently approved Ordinance 1450 to the project -- an ordinance that was passed months after the council approved a rezoning for the development. The new ordinance would have given officials the power to scale back or nix the big-box. For the moment, that hope has been dashed.

"Obviously I am disappointed," Town Attorney Larry Spencer wrote of the ruling in an e-mail Friday. In an interview later, Spencer said he will discuss the possibility of an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia with council Tuesday in a closed session.

If the case goes before the state's high court, experts say, a ruling there could set precedent on the governmental regulation of development in Virginia.

Neighborhood advocates and anti-Wal-Mart activists also expressed dismay at Turk's ruling, with some calling on the council to continue the fight.

"I want council to pursue the actions they started ... they should fight to the finish," said Kay Moody, a longtime neighborhood advocate and a member of the anti-Wal-Mart group Blacksburg United for Responsible Growth, or BURG.

The big-box store "could have such a potential negative influence on our town," Moody said.

Opponents of the project have said the estimated 20,000 increase in daily vehicle trips on the town's already congested south end could exacerbate existing safety and infrastructure problems. They have also identified noise and lights as significant threats to nearby neighborhoods.

Twenty-one landowners affiliated with BURG and represented by that group's attorney were a party to the town's case. It's unclear whether the landowners will seek to appeal Turk's ruling, either alone or in tandem with the town.

BURG will soon meet to discuss next steps, Moody said.

Meanwhile, Fairmount continues work on phase one of its project, called First & Main. Phase one will include various retailers, a movie theater and restaurants ranging from upscale dining to a Sonic drive-in. Phase one is scheduled for completion next fall, said Fairmount attorney Jim Cowan.

Cowan said Turk's ruling shows that when a developer follows the rules and acts in good faith, governments should not try to change the rules in the middle of the process. The attorney said Fairmount and partners hope the ruling will put the controversy behind them and allow them to work with officials and residents "to bring a great project to town."

Phase two construction has not been scheduled but will include the big-box and its parking lot. No tenant has been announced for that phase, but site plans point to a Wal-Mart Supercenter as the preferred retailer. A Wal-Mart representative has said the company is interested in opening a store in Blacksburg.

Turk's decision Friday affirms a unanimous ruling handed down in June by the town's Board of Zoning Appeals. At the time, zoning board member Isabel Berney blamed the council -- and not the developer -- for passing a rezoning that she said left adjacent neighborhoods unprotected.

In his opinion, Turk wrote that in approving the 2006 rezoning and attached proffers -- voluntary restrictions placed on the project by the developer -- the council gave Fairmount vested rights under state law to complete it.

At the very least, Turk's ruling will be important in land-use law because there have been so few judicial rulings interpreting the state code governing vested rights, said prominent Northern Virginia land-use litigator John Foote.

Foote -- recently described by the Washington Post as "one of the shrewdest, most effective advocates for landowners and developers in Virginia" -- characterized Turk's ruling as the most generous reading of the statute to date.

Foote started his career as a local government attorney helping write restrictive zoning rules for officials concerned about exuberant growth. Now he fights to protect landowners and developers from some of those regulations.

The 61-year-old Prince William county litigator has a long history of arguing cases before the state Supreme Court and said he thinks the justices would likely consent to hear an appeal in the Blacksburg case.

The court hears only a fraction of the appeals submitted each year. But, according to Foote, the court often favors land-use cases. An appeal in the Blacksburg case might be even more attractive to the justices because it would allow the court to draw a clearer line between the rights of governments to control land use within their borders and the rights of landowners to pursue economic development projects, Foote said.

The last time the state Supreme Court ruled on the issue was 2003.