A small but determined group organized themselves as "Citizens for Smart Growth" at a meeting Thursday night and set their sights on keeping a Wal-Mart Supercenter out of Clearbrook.

What's still not clear is whether there is enough support for the mission to proceed with a lawsuit against the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors.

Lawyers Dennis Brumberg and Mark Black explained the process of trying to force the county to reconsider the special-use permit and rezoning the supervisors approved Oct. 24 that will allow the development of a 204,000-square-foot Wal-Mart just south of the Roanoke city limits on U.S. 220.

And Brumberg warned the group at the Clearbrook Civic League building that "you have to decide what commitment you want to make in the face of long odds" against success.

He said the group must come up with a $10,000 retainer by Nov. 27, the deadline for filing the lawsuit. They will need to raise another $40,000 or more to continue their fight against the development even if they win in court, he said.

Brumberg and meeting organizer Pam Berberich explained that the lawsuit is a limited first step in the process of attempting to block the construction. At most, a court could decide that the county had not properly followed its own procedures and order it to reconsider the application.

"We'll say when the board voted on Oct. 24, it didn't have all the information they needed as to the impact of traffic" generated by the development, Berberich said. "There was an obligation to have all that information, to know that there will not be an adverse impact" on the community.

If the court agreed, that would restart the decision-making process with the county planning commission, which would have to hold public hearings before advancing the proposal to the supervisors, who would have to vote again.

At that point, "mobilization of the community becomes paramount," Brumberg said, to influence county officials to change their minds.

Most of the "war chest" the group needs to raise would be used to pay for experts and lawyers to challenge the developers' proposals during that new series of hearings, Berberich said.

After a two-hour meeting, fewer than a dozen people raised their hands when asked if they'd be willing to form a group to try to raise enough money to hire the lawyers and proceed with the lawsuit.

That was enough for Berberich to say that she was encouraged by the turnout and the commitment. But she acknowledged that it would likely take until the morning of Nov. 27 before the group knows if it can go forward.

At the end of it all, 70-year-old Watson Simmons worried that while he believes the Wal-Mart development will create "a mess" in the community, opposition is futile. "I'm not against the organization, but I think you're throwing good money after bad. You're not going to stop it."