In an emerging “big-box” backlash, members of the City Council said yesterday that Wal-Mart has halted plans for its first venture into New York City.

“I understand that Vornado has ended negotiations with Wal-Mart to open its doors in my district,” a Democratic council member of Queens, Helen Sears, said in a statement.

The world’s largest retailer announced in December that it was in negotiations with Vornado Realty Trust to develop a 132,000-square-foot store in Rego Park that would open in 2008. An application had been filed with the Department of City Planning, sources at Queens said, but neither Vornado nor Wal-Mart would comment yesterday on the project.

While the retail giant appears stopped for now, Ms. Sears and other members of the vocal anti-Wal-Mart front of council members, union leaders, small-business owners, and mayoral candidates said they saw this as only the first victory in a long struggle.

“We don’t think they’ll go away,” a spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, Richard Lipsky, said.

Still, he said, “Whatever site they look to in New York City is going to generate the same kind of opposition that we saw come to play in the BJ’s fight in the Bronx.”

Wal-Mart’s decision comes one week after BJ’s Wholesale Club withdrew an application for a large store in the Bronx after a council committee unanimously recommended denial, citing traffic concerns.

The council member representing the district of the proposed BJ’s, Madeline Provenzano, criticized the decision, saying her colleagues were depriving the needy neighborhood of jobs and low prices. She said the real reason the store was blocked was not transportation concerns, but a union-led assault against the big-box store.

Organized labor has been a driving force behind the opposition to Wal-Mart, which has no union workers at its American stores. The fight escalated last year, when labor chose the Arkansas-based giant as a target for a nationwide campaign to improve its pay, benefits, and worker treatment.

“We look at the Wal-Mart struggle in Rego Park as the beginning of a big battle,” the president of the New York City Central Labor Council, Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin of Queens, told The New York Sun last night. “I think this action in Rego Park demonstrates New York is a tough town. It’s not like anywhere else in the country where Wal-Mart has established itself.” The labor council is an umbrella group of more than 1 million union members.

The opposition to Wal-Mart was taken up by a wide array of New York leaders, including mayoral candidates Gifford Miller, Anthony Weiner, and Thomas Ognibene, as well as a cadre of council members. A council member from Queens, Joseph Addabbo Jr., said he was “very concerned about how Wal-Mart has a track record of poor treatment of their workers.” Mr. Addabbo is chairman of the council’s civil service and labor committee, which held a hearing this month on labor practices of big-box retailers. He also said that while the large stores may offer hundreds of jobs, they may extinguish even more jobs in the neighborhoods into which they move.

Ms. Sears said, “I am hopeful that if Wal-Mart attempts to locate another site, whether in Queens or Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, or Staten Island, that its officials work tirelessly to improve workplace benefits and conditions so that New York City will welcome it with open arms.

“Until then,” she said, “we can only offer our backs.”

For its part, Wal-Mart appears undeterred in its mission of entering the New York City market. “Wal-Mart is interested in opening stores in New York City,” the director of corporate affairs for the eastern region, Mia Masten, said in a statement. “In fact, we continue to explore a number of possible sites throughout the five boroughs.” Ms. Masten declined to comment on specific sites, including Rego Park, citing continuing negotiations.

With Wal-Mart promising hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue, as well as rock-bottom prices, some New Yorkers said the opposition to the store is unfortunate.

“There are some people who just can’t stand the idea of Wal-Mart in their midst. But these are people who wouldn’t shop there anyway and probably don’t have to,” the managing editor of National Review, Jay Nordlinger, said. “Wal-Mart is a godsend to the poor and middle class.” Mr. Nordlinger wrote about Wal-Mart for National Review last spring.

“Some people will be disappointed,” the founder of the Queens Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Ernesto Cury, said. “Wal-Mart does enjoy the reputation of low-end items, and I think especially immigrant families at the low-income level will feel disappointed, but Queens already has Target and the others. And let’s face it, Wal-Mart is not that far away in Long Island.”

Mr. Cury, an advocate for Queens small businesses, said even though low prices were lost, he was happy to see Wal-Mart go. He was worried small stores would be unable to keep up with the competition.

A Republican candidate for mayor, Mr. Ognibene, said he, too, opposed Wal-Mart because of its impact on small business. “I was always opposed to too much large retail because what I’ve found is they push out a lot of the small mom-and-pops,” the former council member from Queens said. “In the long run, they lead to a lowering of the quality of life.”

Mayor Bloomberg, who declined to comment on Wal-Mart yesterday, has indicated in the past that he is concerned New York City is losing revenue because of its residents’ seeking lower prices in neighboring counties. He has said he would not oppose Wal-Mart’s arrival in the city, but he also cautioned that the city cannot permit the indiscriminate growth of big-box stores.

An Elmhurst resident, Gelacio Vargas, is one New Yorker who has traveled for lower prices. “I have gone various times to the Wal-Mart in New Jersey and other parts of the United States,” he said in Spanish. “The truth is, I always go where I find the best prices. If Wal-Mart opens a store and has sufficiently low prices, people are going to go.”

The withdrawal of the application came before Queens Community Board 6 ever had a chance to gauge public attitudes to the store.

“Basically, the people we’ve heard from have been from outside of the community,” the district manager, Kathleen Histon, said. She said a March 9 public hearing is scheduled and the store site, at Queens Boulevard near the Long Island Expressway, is still in the process of being certified for development by the Department of City Planning and has not yet reached the community board. Ms. Histon said Vornado had never indicated it had completed a deal with Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart employs more than 1.2 million people worldwide. The company has more than 3,000 stores and offices across America and more than 1,000 stores internationally.