A dozen Roanoke County "citizen landowners" have sued the board of supervisors and a Tennessee-based developer in an attempt to block construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the Clearbrook community.

The lawsuit was filed late Monday afternoon, just minutes before the deadline for challenging the board's decision that allowed the development.

The suit alleges that the supervisors acted arbitrarily, capriciously, irrationally and unreasonably. It says the board approved the project last month in violation of its own rules and without knowing all the potential adverse effects of the Wal-Mart development.

The suit asks the court to declare the supervisors' actions null and void. If the court does and the developer wishes to continue with the project, the proposal would have to be resubmitted to the county, giving the plaintiffs new chances to challenge it.

On Oct. 25, the supervisors approved a rezoning and special-use permit for Holrob Associates, which was marketing a 41-acre tract just south of the Roanoke city limits on U.S. 220 to Wal-Mart. The supercenter would replace a smaller store in Roanoke just a mile north of the new location.

At the time of the decision, a parade of witnesses spoke for and against the plan. After testimony that stretched into the early morning hours, the supervisors voted 4-1 to let the development go forward.

County resident and political activist Pam Berberich warned the supervisors at the time that a lawsuit might be filed if they approved the plan without having a final traffic-impact analysis and without having the county's planning commission reconsider the proposal in light of changes that had been made after that body endorsed it three weeks earlier.

Berberich helped organize a community meeting Nov. 16 to rally support for a lawsuit. She was elected to lead a group of a dozen who wanted to proceed with Monday's action.

"The fact that we got where we are today is just short of a miracle," Berberich said Monday. That included employing a new attorney, raising $6,000 for his retainer, and getting the suit filed. "I'm very pleased."

The group decided to hire Richmond lawyer Philip Strother, who specializes in land-use issues and successfully challenged a Wal-Mart development in Front Royal over the past year.

Strother pointed out that this suit is not about the nation's largest retailer but "about the zoning, and the integrity of the overlay district" that defines how development was supposed to proceed in the Clearbrook community.

The 41-acre site is part of 133 acres that are covered by the Clearbrook Village Overlay District, approved six years ago to help preserve the village character of the community while allowing commercial development.

Among its provisions was one that required a special-use permit for any development that totaled more than 50,000 square feet of floor space in one or more buildings. The Wal-Mart Supercenter will be 204,000 square feet, and several outparcels were identified for development on the plan, but without designating the sizes of buildings on them, the suit says.

Berberich said the supervisors' action was so broad that it would allow the construction of other "big-box" retail stores on the 41-acre site.

And by providing a special-use permit for almost a third of the total overlay district, the board was "blowing it out," essentially invalidating the restrictions designed to protect the community, Berberich contended.

"We believe the case is very strong," said Strother, "that the Roanoke [County] Board of Supervisors ... did not adhere to the mandates of the ordinance itself."

"It's about the locality's accountability to follow its own ordinance," he said.

The suit also alleges that the supervisors had only an "inadequate, incorrect and incomplete traffic impact analysis" at the time of their decision. Consequently, the board "could not and did not base its approval ... on a finding that Holrob's proposal would have minimum adverse impacts on traffic congestion," as required by the ordinance, the suit says.

Strother said it was impossible to tell whether the action will slow down the project or how long the litigation might drag out. The suit does not seek an injunction halting progress on the development "at this point," Strother said.

Berberich said her group has raised $6,000 so far, but will likely need about $50,000 to fight the battle through another round of public hearings before the county planning commission and supervisors.

"This is stage one," Berberich said. "Stage two ... is to change the board [of supervisors] and get the community involved."

Supervisor Mike Wray, the current board chairman whose district includes the Clearbrook area, will be up for re-election next year.

"This is a bigger issue than just Clearbrook," Berberich said.