SALISBURY — The Salisbury Planning Board gave a thumbs down Tuesday to a rezoning that could possibly lead to a new Zaxby’s restaurant on Jake Alexander Boulevard.
Gina Dickens, owner of the Zaxby’s at 301 Faith Road, said Tuesday she was in “initial discussions” with John Leatherman about a second Zaxby’s at 420-430 Jake Alexander Blvd. West, across from the Bank of North Carolina and the entrance to the Castlewood housing development and Salisbury Village apartments.
Dickens noted her Zaxby’s in Salisbury has now been in business 10 years.
John and Joan Leatherman, owners of the three parcels making up the 1.4-acre site on Jake Alexander Boulevard, are seeking a rezoning from residential mixed-use (RMX) to highway business (HB).
But several owners of offices on both sides of the property spoke against the zoning change during a Planning Board hearing.
In voting 8-0 against a rezoning, Planning Board members expressed concerns about some of the more intensive uses highway business zoning would allow and how disruptive they might be to offices already in place and the residential areas nearby.
Other Planning Board misgivings were the larger signs highway business zoning would allow and the possible impact on the intersection where traffic would enter, across from Castlewood.
John Leatherman argued that if Salisbury couldn’t have HB zoning along a major highway that has 37,000 vehicles a day, where could the city have it?
He noted the presence of a traffic light already and acknowledged, when asked, that a restaurant was planned for the spot, “but there is nothing signed yet.”
A half dozen people, most of them owners of offices on both sides of the property in question, spoke against the zoning change during a Planning Board hearing. Leatherman had developed most of this same side of Jake Alexander Boulevard West as offices over previous years.
A Taco Bell and Pizza Hut lie at the northern end of this area, closer to N.C. 150.
Mark Oden, owner of one of the offices, said the uses allowed in highway business zoning could cause a huge disruption in what is otherwise an “office plaza.”
Accountant Alan Burke, who owns an office next to the tract, said a 19.5-foot-wide road in back, which is supposed to be maintained by an association of the property owners, is not wide enough nor built to handle the increased traffic from a restaurant.
When the Taco Bell came, office owners were assured trucks delivering to the restaurant would not be allowed to use the same road, “but it happens all the time,” Burke said.
Burke said he and other office owners who bought from Leatherman previously did so on good faith that the zoning would remain what used to be called “office-institutional.”
Faye Porter said she bought into Leatherman’s “vision” for an office complex in 1997. She said she leases her office space to a company from New England, and a rezoning might have a negative impact on renegotiating a lease or on future leases for the office.
James Faust, an attorney for Burke, argued that the HB zoning allowed too many uses not compatible with what’s already in place. He reiterated that existing property owners bought into the idea this area would be office-institutional. To break that up with a restaurant or some other intensive use would overburden the intersection and disrupt the existing sight line of buildings, Faust suggested.
Planning Board member Bill Burgin said he could not support the rezoning for several reasons. He characterized it as not just a minor change in zoning, “it’s a leap.”
Years ago, Burgin said, he supported the development of an office-institutional area in this location because it represented a good intermediate step between the highway and Rosemont neighborhood.
Even though there already is a traffic light at the intersection leading into the site, it serves, Burgin said, more like a policeman standing out and directing traffic so residents of Castlewood and Salisbury Village can enter Jake Alexander Boulevard.
Planning Board Chairman Carl Repsher also described that signalized intersection as much different from the busy N.C. 150/Jake Alexander Boulevard corner.
Burgin said he could possibly support a rezoning to highway business only if it came back as a conditional use district, which included a site plan and a restriction to particular uses.
Planning Board member David Post said signs that would be permitted in HB zoning worried him. He said he didn’t like the idea of a 20-foot neon sign’s being erected next to the Castlewood and Rosemont residential areas.
The city staff had recommended approval of the rezoning. Senior Planner Preston Mitchell said the major reasons were the 37,000 vehicles a day going by the site and how the scale of development would be limited by the small size of the tract.
Mitchell acknowledged, however, that a rezoning to HB wasn’t entirely consistent with the city’s Vision 2020 comprehensive plan.
“This is an introduction of more intense uses,” Mitchell added.
Even with the Planning Board’s denial, which is considered a recommendation, Leatherman can take his rezoning request to Salisbury City Council next Tuesday, if he desires.
In two other rezoning requests Tuesday, the Planning Board:
• Voted 7-0 for a rezoning of the former Holiday Inn (and Hotel Salisbury) at 530 Jake Alexander Blvd. South from highway business to institutional campus. Architect Jimmy Norwood Jr. of Winston-Salem represented Livingstone College in the request.
The college has an option to purchase from Motel Co. of Salisbury the 14-acre site and convert the former hotel into dormitories, classrooms, meeting spaces and training kitchens for its culinary program and hospital school.
Post said the college’s plans were great news because it’s too easy for hotels, after they shut down, to become eyesores. He called it a “fabulous opportunity.”
• Voted 7-0 for rezoning the former Coca-Cola bottling plant at 1828 South Main St. from corridor mixed-use to highway business.
The request comes from 1828 South Main LLC. The site is roughly 3 acres. Mitchell said one proposal for the property is possibly carving it into several flexible spaces for business incubators.
Larry Summey of D Avenue said he would be delighted to see the empty building in use again, but he also cautioned that some of the uses allowed in HB zoning, such as an ABC store, outdoor kennels and auto repair shop, might not be appropriate to the residential area he is a part of.
Mitchell said a main reason the owner of the property is looking for the HB zoning is to allow wholesaling and distribution as one of the uses. That was how it was used as a Coca-Cola bottling plant, but it had been a non-conforming use grandfathered in all of those previous years.
Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.