SALISBURY — The Rowan County Planning Board voted to deny a recommendation for a rezoning request to place a new fire department and a commercial building at the corner of Old Concord and Old Beatty Ford roads on Monday. The board had previously tabled the request after the developer of the property had agreed to address community concerns about traffic during the October meeting.

Dynamic Developers brought a request before the board to rezone a 9.6-acre portion of their 43.2-acre property from Rural Agricultural to Commercial, Business and Industrial with a Conditional District. That portion would then be split into two, with one piece being used for a new Bostian Heights Fire Department building and the other for a commercial building.

At the October meeting, residents who live on Ketner Farm Road said that they believed adding the commercial building would create traffic problems for the people who live there, as Ketner Farm is a dead-end road with only housing located on it. The site plans showed the driveway for the building as being located on Ketner Farm Road. The developer said during that meeting that they would ask the North Carolina Department of Transportation about moving the driveway onto Old Beatty Ford Road instead.

“Any driver that mistakenly heads down it has to either turn around in somebody’s driveway along the way, make an elaborate five-point turn in the middle of the road or drive the whole thing and turn around in a very small cul-de-sac,” said Tyler Wiethorn, who lives on Ketner Farm Road, during the October meeting.

The driveway was still placed on Ketner Farm Road on the site plans presented to the planning board on Monday. Rowan Planner Shane Stewart said that he believed that the NCDOT had told the developer that they would deny a request for a driveway permit on Old Beatty Ford. The developer had noted on the new plans that there would be a right-turn lane onto Ketner Farm Road and that they would place signs at the entrance saying that the road was a dead end.

Planning board member Jerry Davis noted that he hoped the retail building would have been moved away from its current planned location and into the northeast corner of the property, which would have placed it on Old Concord Road along with the fire department building.

Most of the members of the planning board noted that the site plan did fit in the land use plan set up by the county, but that they had the purview to break from that and make decisions based on other factors, such as the safety of the nearby residents.

“Retail will have semi-trucks come in and load and unload, and there’s nowhere for a semi-truck to pull in, turn around and come back out. And hearing from the residents, the worry is that those trucks will be parked in the road or have to back into the road, and that’s a danger to school buses, kids waiting for school buses and local traffic and I still don’t see any improvement,” said Davis.

Both Davis and Chairwoman Karla Foster Leonard said that even though the retail building was in a commercial node, which the land use plan designates as areas away from highways that are ripe for commercial development, the opposition of the neighbors was a large factor in going against the plan.

At the end of the discussion, the board voted four to one to deny recommendation for the request. Board member Sean Reid voted in support of the request, saying that he did not believe any improvements could be made to the plan, considering it had to go through approval processes with both NCDOT and county planning staff before even being presented to them.

Planning board decisions are not final. The board’s recommendations can be brought before the Rowan County Board of Commissioners, who will make the final decision on approval or denial.