Graham’s board of adjustment considered a request by Dollar Tree to have a sign above the retailer’s newest proposed store to be larger than the city’s ordinances allow.
The new store, at 811 South Main Street, in the Crescent Square shopping center beside the anchor grocery store Carlie C’s, is the former location of Daa-BIN, another discount retailer. Over the past four decades, the same space has been, among other things, a Family Dollar store and decades before that Crescent Drug Store.
The proposed Dollar Tree sign at 131.43 square feet was almost 40 percent larger than the allowable size of 83.82 square feet, which is calculated as a percentage of the store frontage.
Board members continually pressed the attorney representing Dollar Tree – Ellis Martin of the Fox Rothschild law firm in Greensboro – and Robert Guyette, an employee of Allen Industries, the construction company hired to handle the sign and other construction, for facts, rather than simply their opinion.
“What I’m hearing is mostly opinion, not evidence,” concluded board member John Wooten. Board chairman Dean Ward concurred, saying the presentation was “too much opinion.”
Under the quasi-judicial rules for board of adjustment hearings, the board of adjustment can consider only relevant facts from expert witnesses, who must be sworn in prior to their testimony. The setting is much like a courtroom, not the more open-ended approach of a traditional planning and zoning agenda item.
Instead, when Guyette opined that the smaller signage would make the store harder for potential customers to find, resulting in lower sales, board members wanted specifics, or comparisons to other stores with smaller signage.
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Ward also questioned the submission of a letter from the company’s engineer – Clark, Geer, Latham & Associates, Inc. of Mobile, Alabama – which argued that the larger signage was necessary for both “visibility, attracting potential customers” and “the safety of motorists looking for the store.” Ward asked why no one from the engineering firm was present in order to address the board’s questions about the basis for the engineering company’s conclusions.
Board member Tony Bailey said, “We simply don’t know enough” to approve a variance.
The inability of Dollar Tree’s representatives even to provide the basics of the store frontage – approximately 47 feet wide by 17 feet high – left board member Chad Huffine, a local engineer himself, concluding that there was an “absence of dimensional facts” presented during the company’s request for a variance.
After about an hour-long hearing, Ward made the motion to recommend denial of the variance request to the city council. His motion passed unanimously, 5-0. In addition to Ward and Wooten, voting for the motion of disapproval were board members Bailey, Mike Benesch, and Huffine.
The Dollar Tree proposed for the 811 South Main Street location would be the company’s second in Graham. A new store was constructed last year about five blocks further south at 1310 South Main Street.
The five-block differential is indicative of the proliferation of similar dollar discount stores. Another brand, Dollar General, operates two stores with 10 blocks of each other along South Main Street in Graham – one at 202 and another at 1217 South Main Street.
