Wallmart's are famous for this kind of activity, and they are very good at it. The best chance you stand is in making noise. Enough people making enough noise (and not being afraid to let those in charge know that if it goes through...they will be gone with the next election) can make developers look elsewhere just because it's not "easy". If you have an environmental position to stand on, it's pretty much bulletproof. Traffic flow patterns can be adjusted, but it does cost money. Make sure your town officials know that you, as a taxpayer, won't support their spending town money to fix any traffic problems. The thing is to make it so inconvenient for developers that they look elsewhere. And town officials in elected positions love attention, but they love being in office too. If they know that the choice they make to let superplazas run rampant will seal their fate for public office, they'll be more apt to chicken out and do what they need to do to stay in their position of power. Either way you look at it, gather people and attend every meeting with vim and vigor.

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Though I am different from you,
We were born involved in one another.

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

Complete surrender should not just come at moments in which one faces overwhelming odds, but in the calm when it seems one is personally in complete control of one's life.