Politics

Planning Board split on new Ingles

Commercial real estate broker Gary Jones makes a point as he speaks to the Planning Board.

By Bill Moss, Published: April 16, 2015

If options now are now too few and far between, fear not.

Grocery shoppers in the city may be about to get one more big supermarket.
The Hendersonville Planning Board on Monday recommended that the City Council grant Ingles permission to build a new 72,000-square-foot store on Spartanburg Highway at Chadwick Avenue, replacing the 46,000-square-foot Ingles that’s there now and adding a Starbucks, wine department, beer cave, seafood counter, pharmacy and Gas Express.
The Planning Board’s approval came after almost two hours of discussion and debate and a rare closed session by board members to ask City Attorney Sam Fritschner how a pending lawsuit could affect the city’s decision.
Despite the concerns about parking, the Planning Board recommended Ingles’ request for a variance from city code to reduce parking spaces from 360 to 237 spaces.
John Cox, a land planner, said a survey of six Ingles stores on Thursday and Saturdays from 4 to 6 p.m. showed that even at their busiest time the stores needed no more than 168 parking spaces for employees and customers. The number of spaces Ingles proposes is less than the 254 parking slots for the current smaller store now on the 5.7-acre site.
The Planning Board recommended that the council grant a setback variance for a part of the building — 333 square feet of its northwest corner— that encroaches on a required 25-foot buffer.
The zoning application and variances Ingles needs to build the store goes to the Hendersonville City Council on May 7.

Gas Express setback

Preston Kendall of Ingles describes plans for a new store.The Planning Board recommended that the City Council deny Ingles’ request for a third driveway on Spartanburg Highway, one more than the city code allows for commercial developments on roads leading to the central business district. The City Council’s denial of a third driveway led Ingles to scrap plans for a Gas Express at its Asheville Highway supermarket two years ago. Ingles has revived the request and is seeking approval of the gas pumps at that location. [See story on Page 12.]
Preston Kendall, project manager for Ingles, said he could not say whether the driveway decision, if upheld by the council, would have on the Spartanburg Highway Gas Express plans.
“We’ll have to take it back tomorrow and let everybody know what happened today,” he said. “We do it for safety concerns and flow of traffic. We don’t want to put anything in that’s going to be a safety concern.”
The existing store, built in 1980, can’t offer all the products that are part of Ingles’ menu today.
“The store that we have now is not big enough to provide everything that we would like to,” Kendall said.
Planning Board member Steve Johnson asked a question that is on the mind of some shoppers given that there is a Harris Teeter and Fresh Market within sight of the Ingles, the Co-Op just down the road and a big Ingles less than five miles away in Flat Rock.
“Why do we need this big new Ingles in that space that’s almost too small for it?” he asked.
“We have a store there now and it does good business,” Kendall replied. “We think if we can upgrade that location to add a pharmacy, which we don’t have, Starbucks, which we don’t have, a gas station, which we don’t have, then our customer base can build in that area from adding those items that we can’t offer in the size store that we have now.”
Would the new store simply pull customers away from the Highland Lake Road store?
“We have stores in Asheville that are that close together,” Kendall said. “It’s almost like it feeds off each other.”

Opponents cite parking, flooding, lawsuit

Planning Board’s approval of the project came despite concerns raised by adjoining property owners over traffic, flooding and parking — and the pending lawsuit that could block the project and force a major redesign.
Gary Jones, a commercial real estate broker whose property adjoins Ingles’ land, sued the city and Ingles after the City Council voted in 2013 to close Joel Wright Street and Copper Penny Drive, two parallel roads that run east-west through the Ingles parking lot.
Jones contends the city illegally closed those private streets that belong to all the property owners in a commercial subdivision first recorded in 1949 as Hendersonville Business Center. The deeds of each property owner, he said, show Copper Penny Street and Joel Wright Drive running in front of and behind the current Ingles store. Jones says that the joint ownership of the streets means that Ingles cannot build on the roadbeds.
“I’m making a little progress because they’ve pulled most of the building off of the roadbed but they’re still using it for parking, curbing, planting and they’re still restricting those roadbeds,” he told the Planning Board.
“So, long story short, they couldn’t get the roadbeds closed, so they hired Mike Egan (a former city attorney) and came up with this plan to go to the City Council and tell them that these are old roadbeds and we can get them to close them and that way we’ll inherit that land. And they went up there and said, ‘Oh, we own all of it.’ Well, that’s not true. I’ve had three surveys. So when they come in here and show this beautiful site plan, they don’t show those roadbeds. It’s like they disappeared. But they’re still there. … If the truth was a rubber band, they’d have it stretched around the world.”
“It’s kind of like my granddaddy used to say,” he added. “You can paint a beautiful picture of a rooster laying an egg. But son, you and I know both know that roosters don’t lay eggs.”
Realtor Jim Barnette Jr. makes a point about flooding.Realtor Jim Barnette told the planning advisers that he had owned property on Greenville Highway since 1970.
“I have seen every flood and been involved in every flood since 1970,” he said. “I don’t believe the site plan is in accordance with the city zoning ordinance” regulating floodplain development. The development would worsen the flood risk, not alleviate it, he said. Instead of covering the stream that runs through the parking lot, he said, Ingles should build a big new retention pond to store floodwaters.
“If you take away that retention pond and you fill up that stream, where is that water going to be displaced to? It’s going to be coming right down Greenville Highway and it’s either going to come in my office or Atha Plaza and it goes down to that intersection at Highway 25 and 176 and it’s blocking the whole traffic situation. I urge you to be cautious in making a decision. This is an opportunity to really do it right to build an even bigger retention pond. You can’t make many adjustments down there without affecting something.”
Cox said Ingles plans to build a large culvert that will handle more water than the pipes that currently carry runoff from the parking lots and roads.
“The plan has been reviewed by the state and by (city zoning administrator) Susan Frady,” he said. “The Army Corps (of Engineers) has reviewed it.”
City Planning Director Sue Anderson reported that the developer’s plans would improve the site’s stormwater management.
Voting no the setback variance and the overall special use permit were Ben Pace and Steve Johnson. Voting yes were chairman Steve Orr, Michael Coggins, Ray Mundy and Jay Thorndike.
After the meeting, Jones predicted that the City Council would “rubberstamp” the permit. As for the roadbed dispute, “We’ll let the judge figure that out,” he said.
Kendall said he could not give a time frame for construction.
“We have one more meeting to go through and of course we’re still in the lawsuit,” he said.