Trying to steadiness neighborhood considerations about elevated visitors and different potential issues with permitting the proprietor of property on Fancy Hole Highway to put it to use by working a comfort retailer, officers have delayed associated rezoning motion.
The small dimension of the positioning at 1515 Fancy Hole Highway close to Westwood Drive — 0.18 of an acre — and the restricted parking availability there’s one consideration together with its location in a densely populated space off U.S. 52-North.
Such points led the Mount Ethereal Board of Commissioners to vote throughout a gathering final Thursday evening to place off a choice relating to a request to alter the parcel’s zoning from a residential to enterprise classification.
“For the most effective likelihood of passage, I say we must always desk that to the following assembly,” Commissioner Jon Cawley mentioned in summing up the state of affairs. “I’d like some clarification.”
The location in query accommodates an unused constructing that previously housed a comfort/nation retailer, which metropolis Planning Director Andy Goodall mentioned closed within the fall of 2015.
Current rezoning efforts by its proprietor — Ibrahim Kaya of Colonia, New Jersey — have created a sticky dilemma Mount Ethereal officers appear hard-pressed to unravel.
The constructing’s origin dates to the Fifties, a time when zoning didn’t exist within the space concerned which was a part of Surry County till being annexed into the town about 15 years in the past.
“Sadly, 60 years later, we’re right here making an attempt to determine what to do with this,” Goodall instructed the commissioners Thursday.
The property is now positioned inside an R-20 (Residential) zoning district, and after annexation the shop was allowed to proceed working there as a authorized non-conforming use till closing in 2015.
However to ensure that a comfort retailer to be re-established, Mount Ethereal officers should approve the positioning’s rezoning to a non-residential classification, in accordance with metropolis planners.
The request at hand is to rezone the parcel from R-20 to the B-3 (Neighborhood Enterprise) designation, with situations together with that the usage of the property be restricted to a “comfort meals retailer.”
As well as, “no parking” indicators or striping is to be positioned alongside pavement adjoining to Westwood Drive together with one handicapped area being designated to handle parking considerations raised concerning the website.
These preliminary situations have been imposed by the Mount Ethereal Planning Board. For the reason that matter has progressed to the commissioners they’ve added extra, together with the set up of an 8-foot-tall privateness fence outdoors the construction and a curbed landscaped island.
The planning group, an advisory physique to the town commissioners, voted to suggest the rezoning by means of a 5-3 determination in February, which isn’t binding on the commissioners.
Its break up determination mirrored neighbors’ complaints about elevated visitors ensuing (each vehicular and pedestrian), a scarcity of on-site parking for the deliberate comfort retailer and automobiles parking on the street (Westwood Drive) when the enterprise operated there beforehand.
Commissioners involved
The commissioners additionally had loads to say concerning the matter Thursday evening.
A lot of the dialogue was centered on the smallness of the area concerned and the related impacts on parking availability and neighboring properties.
“It’s a reasonably slim lot,” metropolis planner Ben Barcroft agreed. “The lot itself is just 40 toes broad.”
“Why not discover a use for it that’s not (accompanied by) a continuing movement of visitors,” Cawley mentioned at one level whereas suggesting that an workplace may very well be a superb different.
Commissioners additionally questioned whether or not the doable late-night working schedule of the comfort retailer would disrupt the neighborhood.
“I don’t suppose it’s actually an applicable space for a 24-hour retailer,” Commissioner Steve Yokeley mentioned in asking {that a} time restrict even be included among the many situations.
“Having a enterprise working at twelve o’clock at evening in a neighborhood won’t be a good suggestion,” fellow board member Tom Koch agreed.
Nonetheless, the dialogue indicated that this won’t be doable from a authorized standpoint.
“They should be enforceable situations,” Goodall defined.
Whereas metropolis ordinances regulate the hours of a loud industrial plant or when LED lighting have to be turned off at evening, the planning director identified, 24-hour schedules in place for comfort shops have to be utilized to all.
Goodall mentioned the property proprietor must conform to such a situation.
Kaya, who was current on the assembly, mentioned plans name for the shop to be open from 6 a.m. to 10 or 11 p.m.
Yokeley mentioned he thinks the scheduling and all different situations rising must be specified within the rezoning ordinance thought of by the commissioners.
“I couldn’t vote for it the best way it’s proper now,” he mentioned. “I simply suppose the hours should be regulated.”
The planning director mentioned the rezoning difficulty is made additional problematic by the likelihood that if the property proprietor can’t do something with the positioning, the constructing will proceed to deteriorate and ultimately should be razed.
“And that’s the place we’ve struggled with this,” Goodall mentioned of discovering an answer.
Citizen feedback
Though the Mount Ethereal Planning Board acquired emails from adjoining property house owners expressing opposition to the rezoning within the closely populated space, nobody spoke on it throughout a public listening to held in the course of the commissioners’ assembly Thursday evening.
Two written feedback have been acquired for the listening to and browse aloud by Carolyn Hegler, a metropolis clerk.
One was from Jennifer McBride, an adjoining property proprietor related to a enterprise known as M&H Mechanical, LLC, positioned on Fancy Hole Highway.
McBride expressed opposition to the rezoning request.
“My greatest concern is the dearth of enough parking at this explicit location,” she wrote relating to the shop lot. “I don’t need their clients parking on my property.”
McBride mentioned this is able to drive fencing to be erected at her expense.
She additionally talked about the presence of “folks of questionable character” strolling up and down Fancy Hole Highway and that the shop may exacerbate this presence. McBride thinks it is going to trigger extra issues than options.
Mount Ethereal resident Carol Burke provided a differing view in her written feedback for the general public listening to.
“Previous to this property being annexed by the town, this comfort retailer was a constructive comfort retailer for the realm,” Burke suggested.
“Once I was instructing horseback-riding classes to pre-elementary and elementary college students at Turfwood Stables on the nook of Fancy Hole Highway and Miller Highway, this was a well-managed comfort retailer with a clientele that supported the enterprise proprietor,” Burke continued.
“I’m not conscious of any misbehavior or drug-related exercise that occurred in the course of the a few years that the shop was operated at this website.”
Extra just lately, “sadly, this space has turn into a haven of medicine and criminality,” Burke wrote, citing efforts by Surry Sheriff Steve Hiatt of late to assault that drawback in close by territory nonetheless lined by county authorities.
“Hopefully, with a correctly managed comfort retailer beneath the jurisdiction of the town of Mount Ethereal Police Division, this space may be returned to an exquisite law-abiding drug-free group, what all of us need,” Burke commented.
