GRANITE QUARRY — The Granite Quarry Town Council approved a rezoning and conditional district during a meeting on Thursday that would allow for a storage facility across the road from East Rowan High School.

The applicants, Douglas and Kendal Cline, requested that the property be rezoned from single-family residential, or SFR-3, to U.S. Highway 52 Commercial, or C-52, so that they could build a “state of the art, aesthetically pleasing, technology-driven self-storage facility,” according to the application. The property, which does not yet have an address according to the county GIS system, is located directly across the street from East Rowan High School.

Originally, the request was simply a rezoning and did not have a conditional district attached. The property owner and the town held a neighborhood meeting after the July planning board meeting and invited all of the adjacent property owners. Planning, Zoning and Subdivision Administrator Rick Flowe said the meeting was well attended, and as a result of community feedback from the meeting the applicants proposed that a conditional district be added to the rezoning

The condition imposed as a result of the addition of the district was that the property have a 30-foot setback provided for the southern property. This condition added extra buffer space to separate the storage facility from the houses to the south in the Autumn Woods subdivision, which are outside of the town limits.

After Flowe presented the staff summary, the members of the council spoke about the history of the property, which had been brought before them in the past to rezone it to the SFR-3 designation. However, the property had issues that prevented it from being utilized for residential usages.

“If I’m not mistaken, the property still does not perc, so it would take a sewage line or something. I think that’s why the deal fell through for the residential property. I think this looks like it’s maybe a better fit for that property since it won’t have a lot of cars going in and out like the residence and it wouldn’t require sewage,” said Councillor John Linker.

Councillor Rich Luhrs noted that the property had also been looked at previously for potential retail space, which members of the community had expressed concern with.

“There were concerns from the community revolving around traffic. That was a huge conversation. The second piece was whether or not retail would attract some of the students to walk across Highway 52 to purchase candy or soda or whatever. This has neither of those issues, as far as I can see,” said Luhrs, who previously served as the chairman of the town planning board.

Mayor Pro Tem Doug Shelton asked whether or not the rezoning would affect the purchase of the property or vice versa, to which Flowe noted that if the request were approved, both the zoning and the conditional district would be applied to the property regardless of owner. The Clines also provided an addendum to their purchase of the property, which is currently owned by Norwood-based DWB Real Estate Properties, which stated that if the rezoning were denied, the purchase would have been voided.

After the discussion the councillors voted three to one to approve the rezoning and the conditional district, with Councillor Laurie Mack voting against it.