Graham’s planning board has unanimously rejected a Graham developer’s request to rezone a half-acre lot across Pine Street from the post office from office and industrial to general business.
The board voted 6-0 on a motion to not approve the request to rezone the half-acre lot at 200 South Marsh Street to B-2 for general business. (Chad Huffine was absent, as he was attending the Burlington city council meeting Tuesday night.)
Few details were provided for the planning board’s discussion Tuesday night about what Graham developer Jason Cox hopes to build on the property.
Cox told Graham’s planning board Tuesday night that rezoning his property would essentially conform to the existing zoning designations for other nearby properties.
“A significant number of parcels” on the eastern side of Marshall Street “are and have been zoned B-2” for general business, Cox told the planning board. “If you look, you’ll basically see a number of B-2 parcels on the same side of the street as we are…We’re just basically looking to put the same sort of rights that a number of parcels already have on that same side of the street.”
Cox loosely characterized his plans for the property as a mixed-use development. “[It would] most likely be some sort of retail on the ground floor and possibly some sort of residential above that,” he told the planning board.
However, uncertainty about what could go on the half-acre lot has prompted Graham’s planning staff to conclude that the requested general business zoning could be viewed as incompatible with surrounding properties, based on a staff report that was prepared for the planning board’s discussion.
The city’s future land use map has designated that property for downtown residential uses, such as single-family homes with supporting uses that include “places of worship, daycares, park facilities, schools, civic spaces,” and other types of development that would not generate excessive traffic and parking, according to a Graham planning department report.
The area is currently zoned for residential, office/industrial, and business uses. The lot at 200 South Marshall Street has a dentist’s office on one side of the property and a single-family home on another side.
Larry Causey, who owns Rose Family Dentistry at 204 South Marshall Street, adjacent to Cox’s property, told the planning board Tuesday night that he doesn’t understand why Cox couldn’t give specifics about his plans for the property.
“Retail could mean anything,” Causey said. “We don’t need another bar; we don’t need another tattoo parlor. I would like to know what’s going on; what’s going to be put on that property; how much parking is he going to need. I don’t want to be an overflow parking lot for it; I have patients coming and going. I just don’t want my parking lot full of his customers – that’s my complaint, and I don’t understand why he won’t tell us. I’m not necessarily thinking about [Cox]; I’m thinking about the next person because anything could go there. We have enough vaping; we have enough bars. Graham doesn’t need that. I came here in 1979 because of Graham, a nice Southern town, quiet.”
Ramona Cheek, who lives at 209 East Pine Street, next door to Cox’s property, said she has lived there for “50-years plus” and wants to know what will be put on the corner lot “because that is my home and we have two residences beside of us.”
“I’m interested in the future of it for my well-being as well as my neighbors’,” Cheek told the planning board.
Planning board members asked Cox how many stories he’s considering building there.
Cox told the board that the B-2 zoning is “pretty limited” when it comes to building heights.
The city’s planning director said that there’s not a height requirement, though a subsection of the development ordinance requires additional setbacks for any building over 50 feet high.
Cox said that the dimensions of the property would limit the height of any potential future building to about three stories.
Another neighbor, Bonnie Blalock of 215 East Pine Street, a former member of the planning board urged the board Tuesday night seriously consider the effects that granting the rezoning could have on surrounding properties.
Planning board members generally concluded that the table of permitted uses for B-2 zoning would allow for a “wide array” of possible developments that probably would not fit with that area, without knowing what’s going to be built.
Lack of specificity doomed earlier rezoning request for same property
A request for conditional rezoning for the same half-acre lot had been submitted in the spring of 2022 by former Graham city councilman Lee Kimrey and was unanimously approved by the planning board but unanimously rejected the following month, in April 2022, by Graham’s city council.
In reviewing the earlier request for conditional rezoning, Graham’s planning staff concluded that, given its location at a major intersection and the size of the property, “mixed-use is likely the best-suited use for this parcel,” based on a March 2022 report by then-planning director Justin Snyder.
However, the city council – citing the lack of specificity in a hand-drawn conceptual site plan that Kimrey had provided – unanimously rejected Kimrey’s request for conditional rezoning to build an office building at 200 South Marshall. (Kimrey, for his part, countered at the April 2022 council meeting that it could cost anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000 to obtain the type of detailed plans that the council apparently sought.)
The rezoning request is currently scheduled to be presented to the city council at its next meeting on April 8.
Cox purchased lot at 200 South Marshall Street in July 2021 for $160,000 from Aubrey C. Thompson, Jr. and Rebecca and Mark Opgrand of Wilmington, according to documents that were filed at the time with Alamance County’s Register of Deeds. The county’s tax department lists the latest assessed value for the property at $145,432.
