Wal-Mart is back.

Less than a week after a developer disclosed it had dropped plans to build the retail giant’s first New York store, Wal-Mart is considering two sites on Staten Island.

Apparently, one defeat in Queens and a hostile City Hall was not enough to scare the world’s largest retailer away from the New York City market.

One property is near the Outerbridge Crossing in Richmond Valley and the other borders South and Forest avenues in Mariners Harbor, the Staten Island Advance reported yesterday. Wal-Mart refused to comment on any specific development plans for the city. Instead, in a statement, the company reaffirmed its commitment to explore sites in all five boroughs.

With big-box stores having struggled recently to set up shop in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, Staten Island is considered the borough of least resistance for large retailers. The borough, which has grown by about 500,000 residents during the past decade, is in need of more retail options to accommodate its growing population and has the space available for such development, according to its chamber of commerce.

“In the Staten Island community I think the message is the residents here want to be able to buy locally and not to be forced to go to another state,” a former Staten Island borough president, Guy Molinari, said. “Certainly from the New York City perspective it’s far better to be able to have jobs created here.”

The Richmond Valley property is an 18-acre abandoned industrial site near the southern tip of the island.

“It’s a blighted polluted brownfield,” a Republican council member representing the South Shore of Staten Island, Andrew Lanza, said. “I think there’s potential for a positive impact on the borough in turning this site around and creating jobs.”

Mr. Lanza said he has been working with the developer, Tim Harrison, a partner in South Avenue Development LLC, for more than a month to negotiate use of the site.

Mr. Harrison did not return calls for comment.

Mr. Lanza said the developer has told him Wal-Mart is committed to working very closely with the community and has been receptive to ideas that include a vision for a store very different than the typical sterile big box, complete with Victorian lighting and special landscaping.

The other site, part of a 27-acre spot on Mariners Harbor, appears to be earlier on in the development stage and could face more opposition.

“The developer is still negotiating with different people including Wal-Mart,” the broker handling the Mariner Harbor site, Daniel Masters Sr., said yesterday. Mr. Masters said the Texas-based developer, who asked not to disclose his identity, has not expressed concern about community or local political opposition to a Wal-Mart store. “I’ve heard from someone on the [community planning] board and said they would like to see something like it. It’s right near the Home Depot and from what I understand Home Depot is one of the best that they have in terms of sales.”

The council member representing the North Shore, Michael McMahon, a Democrat, said he thinks differently. Mr. McMahon, who indicated that the developer has yet to contact him, said he would oppose any plan unless Wal-Mart worked with the community and followed a model similar to Ikea’s recent successful bid in Brooklyn.

“Given Wal-Mart’s current employment practices, I don’t think that the city should extend to it any special considerations such as a zoning change that would allow it to locate a store,” Mr. McMahon said, adding he would fight to prevent any such zoning changes or special permits. “Some people like the idea of Wal-Mart because they want to be able to shop there, but they have to realize that because of the way that Wal-Mart treats its employees, the city as a whole would lose money because it would have to make up the difference for benefits for health care and things like food stamps.”

This type of criticism of Wal-Mart surfaced in two previous City Hall hearings this year after negotiations for the Queens site were announced and is reportedly what pushed the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, to pull out of negotiations. Both Staten Island sites would require the City Council to approve a zone change or special permit before a retailer of Wal-Mart’s size could open there.

Mayor Bloomberg scored the council on Tuesday regarding the backlash against big-box stores, saying, “The City Council should not be picking and choosing which companies come into this city.”

A leader of the loosely-formed alliance of Wal-Mart detractors, including small-business leaders, mayoral candidates, and organized labor, is the president of the New York City Central Labor Council, Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin of Queens. Wal-Mart, which has no unions in its American stores, has been the target of a national campaign by organized labor.

“Basically, the largest employer in the country pays low wages and provides weak benefits, and it is a drag or a weight on the wages and conditions in the rest of the retail industry,” Mr. McLaughlin said.

Wal-Mart says it pays its workers an average of $9.68 an hour with slightly higher wages in metropolitan areas. The company says 86% of its full-time workers have health insurance, 56% of them through the company.

Critics say Wal-Mart defines fulltime workers under a 40-hour workweek and that the average pay of a sales clerk falls below $9.68 an hour, which puts those employees below the poverty line, thereby qualifying them for public benefits.