SALISBURY — The Rowan County Board of Commissioners on Monday were set to hear a request for the development of a Dollar General at the corner of Mooresville and Briggs roads, but removed the item from the agenda at the start of the meeting.

Teramore Development is planning to construct a 10,665-square-foot store on property owned by Greer Goodman. The company is requesting a Special Non-Residential Intensity Allocation, which would permit the project to exceed the allowed 12% built-upon area (buildings, pavement, gravel, etc.) limitation requirement of the Back Creek/Sloans Creek watershed and allow up to 70% built-upon area for the project.

Teramore is the same company planning to build a Dollar General on Old Mocksville Road near Ivan’s Restaurant. Those plans were approved by the Salisbury City Council in April despite passionate, organized opposition from residents in the area.

Even though Teramore’s request was removed from the agenda, Ted Fuller, who lives on Briggs Road, approached the lectern during public comment and asked about the status of the request. Commissioners Chair Greg Edds said the board is “working on how we are going to respond to that.”

“We were not prepared to either pass it or not pass it tonight, so we requested that Teramore pull it from the agenda and they agreed,” he said.

Fuller asked the board not to approve the request in the future.

“I hope you will shoot it down, knock it out and in some way or another put reins on them so they can’t come into our county, in our neighborhoods and put these things where we don’t want them,” Fuller said. “That’s what I think and that’s what a lot of other people think too.”

The new Dollar General would be located a little less than four miles from the existing Dollar General at 2112 Mooresville Road.

Fuller said Mooresville and Briggs roads are already extremely busy and said the Dollar General near the intersection of Mooresville and Sherrills Ford roads has created a “bottleneck” of traffic.

“I don’t mind having the Dollar General, but that’s the wrong place to put it,” he said.

As of 2019, 7,200 cars traversed Mooresville Road per day on average, according to the North Carolina Department of Transportation. As of 2018, Briggs Road had 4,200 cars drove on the road per day on average. Those traffic numbers were under the design capacities of both roads. The NCDOT is currently using pre-pandemic numbers because they more accurately reflect the amount of traffic on the road.

Kelly Seitz, an NCDOT district engineer, said the construction of the Dollar General would likely not require a traffic impact analysis because most Dollar General stores generate 600 cars per day, well under the 3,000 threshold to trigger an analysis.

According to planning documents, the entrance to the Dollar General would be on Briggs Road. NCDOT has not issued a driveway permit for the site. The plan submitted to the Rowan County Planning Department indicates that 19 red maples trees will be planted between the store and Mooresville and Briggs roads and 23 evergreen trees will be planted along the northern property line. The facade of the store would match the Dollar General in Woodleaf, according to Teramore Development.

The property was rezoned two years ago from rural residential to commercial, business and industrial despite concerns from residents who were worried about the property being turned into a Dollar General. With the necessary zoning already in place, the SNIA request is the only major approval Teramore needs from commissioners before moving forward with the development.