Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

Family Dollar rejected, but debate could continue

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Susan Dickson

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer
CARRBORO – Following several meetings and hours of testimony, the Carrboro Board of Adjustment on Wednesday voted 5-2 to deny a variance needed for a Family Dollar store proposed for the corner of Alabama Avenue and Jones Ferry Road.

However, the debate could continue, as the developer has within the past few days appealed to the town to debate the existence of the ephemeral stream on the property – the reason that a variance to the town’s land-use ordinance is needed. Should the town determine that the ephemeral stream does not exist, or that the developer could make changes to the property such that it would not exist, a variance would no longer be needed, but the project would still need a special-use permit approved by the board.

Raleigh-based Stronach Properties has proposed building an 8,100-square-foot, single-story Family Dollar with 26 parking spaces on a one-acre parcel. Alabama Avenue residents and other community members have come out strongly against the project, saying the development would bring increased traffic, noise pollution and unsafe conditions to the neighborhood while decreasing values of surrounding properties.

Following the denial of the variance application, the applicant’s attorney, David Rooks, asked the board to leave the special-use permit application open until the ephemeral stream issue came to some resolution. However, both board members and members of the public bristled at that request.

“What I’m hearing is the rules may be changing now that the boat’s left the dock, and I’m very uncomfortable with that,” board member Richard Ellington said. “Since it’s the applicant that has brought this up, and it’s not something that anyone other than the applicant has brought to the floor, I’m more in favor of voting it up or voting it down.”

Because the board would not leave the application open, the applicant decided to withdraw it and gave no comment as to whether or not he would resubmit it at a later date.

Neighborhood resident Tamara Sanders said she was “flabbergasted” at the developer’s request.

“I’m just kind of speechless at this point,” she said. Sanders said the whole process has really brought the neighborhood together, however, and that she and other residents are prepared to continue to fight against the project.

“I think that we are hyper aware of our little area in this town,” she said.

‘Reasonable’ vs. ‘profitable’
One of the key questions the board considered with regard to the variance was whether Stronach could make no reasonable use of the property by complying strictly with the provisions of the ordinance. Stronach argued that the proposed configuration of the project, which included paving over the stream at the front of the property, was the only possible configuration of the project, since large delivery trucks must maneuver in and out of the parking lot from the driveway off Alabama Avenue.

In addition, he presented several models by which the stream could be avoided by building a smaller structure, but which would not be financially profitable for a developer.

Rooks said that should the board deny the variance, the value of the property would drop drastically, taking money away from the property owners, the Neville family. Stronach has the option to purchase the property from the Nevilles.

However, the majority of the board said they felt that Stronach did not prove that he could make no reasonable use of the property without the variance.

Board member Catherine DeVine said she felt it was important that the board make the distinction between “reasonable” and “profitable.”

“I don’t see any profitable use that could be made of that property [without the variance],” she said. “Reasonable use, to my way of thinking, is residential, something small enough and non-invasive … at the back of the property so that it would not disturb the stream.”

Board Chair David Collins agreed.

“I do not believe that profit to anyone, be they the developer or be they the landowner, is a factor we are asked to determine,” he said. “What I believe we should be determining is based on allowable use of the land.”

Collins added that there are 76 listed allowable uses for property zoned neighborhood residential, as this parcel is, and that the board’s role is to determine “can anything be developed, period – not can anything be developed and return a profit to the applicant.”

Board members Joe Collins and Ellington voted in favor of granting the variance, saying they thought that no reasonable use could be made of the property without it.

“I really don’t see how anything could ever be done, no matter what, even any kind of housing, a commercial-development property, offices, whatever,” Ellington said. “I feel that if it were not allowed to be used to its fullest extent that the actual value of the property would be diminished greatly.

“I really can’t see what I would consider to be a reasonable use of the property itself as it now stands without making some major changes to it that include affecting the ephemeral stream,” he added.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme