We’re LIVE! at Danville City Hall for today’s Danville Planning Commission meeting. This article is now complete.
We’re underway. This is a pretty straight forward meeting when it comes to Special Use Permits. The first permit is for the Walmart Neighborhood Market gas station plans, and the second is for Kathryn Trakas to start a new icemaking business at 633 Newton St. They pass 6-0. Q Jones is out today.
By the way, the Register & Bee article on this meeting said that the Planning Commission voted on approving the demolition of the existing Piggly Wiggly building. That’s WRONG. That only requires a standard building permit and doesn’t need any Planning Commission approval.
We’ve put the green outline on this drawing to show you the Walmart Neighborhood Market location, and the light blue outline shows you where the gas station & convenience store will be.
The guys from Philips Edison (the owners of Nordan shopping center) show the planning commission the plans for the Walmart buildout. We’ve highlighted Planning Commission member Harold Garrison in orange & R&B reporter Denice Thibodeau in pink because we like playing with our highlighting tool in Photoshop. Heh.
That’s the end of the Special Use Permit requests. Next comes a few proposed code changes. One clarifies the definition of “Car Wash” to a simple “place where vehicles are washed”. Simple enough. Next comes adding “Urban Agriculture” to certain zoning designations. That will allow limited livestock like chickens and cows if the owner can get a Special Use Permit. There’s a lot of back and forth during the public hearing and I get up to put my viewpoint in. The Planning Commission meetings are laid back enough so that the speakers, the city staff and commissioners can ask and answer questions to each other. Joshua Hearne from Grace & Main Ministries got a donation of 1.5 acres and wants to use the land for growing food for the needy. Joshua is truly an amazing man, folks.
We’ll see how Danville City Council accepts these new definitions when they have to vote on them next month.
More coming up on SouthsideCentral!
“There’s a lot of back and forth during the public hearing and I get up to put my viewpoint in,” said Bruce Hedrick in the above report of the Danville Planning Commission meeting.
That seems to be the trend at the School Board, City Council and any other public meetings Hedrick attends. As a former reporter I NEVER interjected myself or my opinions into the public meeting. Any clarifications and questions I had were directed at the appropriate person(s) in a one-on-one exchange AFTER the meeting adjourned.
Mr. Hedrick will probably disagree because that’s what he does best, but I always thought it unethical for an on-duty reporter to conduct himself in this way. If I ever felt the need to become part of the public hearing, I would surely leave my notepad, tape recorder, video and still camera . . . and my SOUTH CENTRAL NEWS title at home . . . and speak as a regular citizen.
Perhaps Mr. Hedrick might be getting on camera at these meetings just for the publicity value for his website.
Total disagreement, because SouthsideCentral isn’t just a news website. It’s a fusion of news and opinion.
As for your spurious “Perhaps…” comment, youre quite wrong. I state my opinion on the record at meetings as a private citizen, as anyone else can.
Things evolve. Welcome to SouthsideCentral, Randy. I’m glad that you visit the website.
[…] business on Newton St. sails through easily. The “urban agriculture” proposal that we told you about in this Planning Commission article eventually gets passed. but Fred Shanks notes that under the new […]