By Ashley McCarty
West Union Council held a special meeting Feb. 1 to further discuss plans for the proposed new Dollar General store.
Council President Randy Brewer prefaced that the only topic which could be discussed during the meeting was the property on North West Street.
“I’m with GBT Realty, we are a development company out of Nashville, Tennessee. We work for Dollar General. We are their largest developer, we built approximately 100 new stores a year in 39 different states. The way that these sites are selected, Dollar General actually does all the research and they tell us where they want to be. They actually give us coordinates as to what piece of property they want. It’s our job to go to that location, buy that piece of property, build the store and lease it back to them. We do have, obviously, an issue as far as the operations of the store, the way that North West Street cuts the site in half. It’s detrimental to Dollar General; it is causing some problems with them,” said Senior Vice President of Net Lease Development Bob Gage.
At the same time, they know that street is a public street, it’s been there forever, and the bank uses it pretty heavily, he said.
“Traffic backs up from going through the drive-thru. Now, we’ve got a couple of proposals to try to get around this scenario. It looks like one of them is good for me, and one of them is good for First State Bank President and CEO Mr. Mike Pell. Neither one of them actually accomplishes everything for everybody. I just need to get some good solid feedback from everybody on the board and residents as to what I need to go back and tell our retailer,” said Gage.
Gage brought two site plans. The one favored by the retailer would close off North West Street at its current location on Main Street. The second plan pulls the Dollar General back from North West Street and adds parking to the front.
In both plans, the current location of Holsinger Monument is still used for additional parking.
“That works best for the operation of their store. They have stressed that they have concerns regarding an active street being right at the front door of the store. So, they feel like there’s some safety issues there that need to be addressed if we do end up going that direction. We’ll have to do some extra safety measures, most likely it will be something along the lines of speed bumps, signage, and painted crosswalks across North West Street where the parking lot is and the door is. Do either one of those plans look like they would work?” said Gage.
Councilman Steve Rothwell said the plan that leaves North West Street open is the best bet because the street is used often.
“Everybody from the other side of town, I’ll say the south side of Main Street probably uses that street more than anybody because they don’t cross Main Street to get to the First State Bank. As far as where the building sits and your parking and stuff like that, wherever you decide that’s fine with me. Your talk about safety, I see no problem with putting up signs and putting in speed bumps,” said Rothwell.
Councilman John Lafferty said he agreed 100 percent with Rothwell on keeping North West Street open.
“Can you ever give me a case in West Union where a new store or retailer has come in and demanded or asked that a street be closed? Do you have the history on any of that?” said Lafferty.
Gage said he was involved in two incidents that he could remember offhand.
“Not in this state, but two projects right off the bat where municipalities have closed streets for new development coming in. There’s two or three other ones that I know that they were one way streets that they reversed the flow to go the other direction to accommodate the store going in. So, it happens,” said Gage.
Lafferty said but it’s very few, under one percent.
“Of all your dealings in real estate transactions and with Dollar General, only less than one percent demanded the street be closed,” said Lafferty.
Gage said those were special situations just like this one with North West Street.
“We are just trying to get [to a point] where we accommodate everybody,” said Gage.
Councilwoman Donna Young said Gage would have never known the answer unless he asked that question.
“We like the street left open. I love the idea of the store coming, but with the road being open, I think that would best accommodate both,” said Young.
Village Administrator Jerry Kirker asked Pell if it would hurt First State Bank that much if North West Street was made into a one-way going north.
“We do have a lot of people that exit to Walnut Street,” said Pell.
Kirker said they could stop North West Street in the middle and still let people enter from Main Street.
“The ones coming from Walnut Street, make it a one-way going north toward your bank,” said Kirker.
Young said making it a one-way from Walnut Street may be a good solution, too.
“We could make it a one-way, but customers are going to do what customers are going to do,” said Pell.
Brewer said they were not here to hurt anyone.
“Right, and that’s not the intent. We’re just trying to get to a spot where it actually works for the retailer and it works for you as well. There were a couple of other comments. The plan that you have that does not have the red triangle on it, if you can see right at the front on the west side of the building, we put parking right in front of the building. Second thought, after hearing Mr. Pell that the traffic actually backs up all the way through on North West Street, I think it might be more detrimental to put those parking spaces at the front of the store like that,” said Gage.
Young asked if there would be fencing put up between the Dollar General and First State Bank due to the prospect of people parking at the bank for Dollar General.
“We’re proposing 35 parking spaces, which is a little more than what we actually need. If you think a fence between us and the bank [would be best], and we can put signage up also for bank parking only. A fence wouldn’t be an issue. We can do that. Normally, what we do is put up a 6ft privacy fence; stockade fence, screened, 6ft tall,” said Gage.
Brewer said he wanted Pell’s feedback, too.
“I’m a lifelong resident of West Union. I think it’s important for me to say that I am in favor of economic development, I’m in favor of investments in West Union and I’m in favor of a new Dollar General in West Union. I can also share that this is our busiest branch. We do 10,000 transactions a month out of this facility. You might remember that just a few years ago, we did a significant remodel to the drive-thru and added two more service lanes so we can now serve four clients at a time in the two lanes that we have. I wish I had some pictures of how traffic backs up from our drive-thru and inhibiting North West Street at all could hurt us,” said Pell.
The residents of West Union have about $95 million in deposits housed in the West Union branch, he said.
“It’s just a significant part of our operation. I hope we can come up with a solution. Any solution that inhibits North West Street is going to hurt us, I feel like. I want to support the investment, I think it’s important that we have something, and I think his store is going to be extremely successful. So, he’s just going to add to the traffic that I already have right there in that corner. I’m just fearful that we’re going to have a bottleneck of traffic on that corner of town,” said Pell.
Gage asked if there were certain times of the day when the stacking occurs. Pell said Fridays, the first of the month and right before and after holidays.
Gage asked Pell how big of a deal it would be for them to reverse the drive-thru.
“We have four service bays here. My fear is that if we stack cars across this — can it be done, yes — I think this would be more problematic by trying to stack cars this way because that all of a sudden shuts this entry. This is our main entrance into the building right here,” said Pell.
Young suggested putting the entrance off of Main Street instead of North West Street.
“You’ll still have the same footage for your overstock and your trucks,” said Young.
Gage said the only problem he could see with that is the truck loading.
“If we put the front door [off of Walnut Street], we could theoretically put the loading in [this corner of the building toward the bank on] North West Street. That would maybe be a drive-thru scenario, but the truck would be sitting in North West Street for 45 minutes or an hour. About an hour once a week the truck would be sitting like that,” said Gage.
Rothwell asked if they have certain delivery times.
“They try to do it as early on Monday mornings as they can, as they get there. The idea is to get them there before the store opens. There’s a two-hour window there in the morning [to accommodate for] traffic, weather,” said Gage.
Pell said the drive-thru opens around 8:30 a.m.
“That’s not a terrible idea. Let me look into that and see if I can get something. That’s actually not a bad idea at all. Unfortunately, the truck would be backing off of North West Street, which is something that we normally don’t do. That’s a big no for us is to have a truck back off of a public street. But, this scenario, I don’t know how I can get around it,” said Gage.
Rothwell said he didn’t think that at that time in the morning prior to the bank opening there would be that much traffic.
“You’ve got the potential of it showing up late because of weather or something, and then it’s sitting there for an hour blocking the stacking capabilities of the drive-thru. I may be able to work something out on that and get him off the road. Just do a drive-thru scenario,” said Gage.
Gage said if he cannot get the retailer on board, they’ll look for another site.
“Obviously that road has to stay open. So if I can’t get them on boardwith the configuration that they’re happy with, the site doesn’t work and we have to go somewhere else. Not saying we’re going to leave town, we’re just going to say we’ll have to look for some more property as close to this as we can get. 1.2 or 1.3 acres is the smallest we can go,” said Gage.
Gage said the new Dollar General has to be up and running by November. The construction has to start by July.
Council, Kirker, and Gage briefly discussed the safety measures they could potentially put in place, such as speed bumps on either entrance of North West Street, signs, crosswalk and flashing lights.
“Alright, so it looks like I’m moving the building to the east, we’re taking the parking out of the front, moving the front door around to face Walnut Street, put a speed bump on either side of the store North West Street, crosswalk in the middle, all the rest of the parking is on the west side [at Holsinger Monument] and putting a fence up between us,” said Gage.
In attendance were the owners of Holsinger Monument, Alan and Patty Holsinger, and current renters of the trailer on the adjacent property, Donna and Ralph Glenn.
“I own Holsinger’s Monument right here. We rent that spot. My concern was, nobody talked to us, my landlord, or nothing what was going on until it got blown up,” said Alan Holsinger.
Patty Holsinger said they were blindsided.
“Your landlord still hasn’t talked to you yet?” said Gage.
Patty Holsinger said absolutely not, they had to call him, and found out through Facebook.
“I know I don’t have a million dollar project going on here, but I have to relocate my small business somewhere here in West Union. I’m not leaving West Union,” said Alan Holsinger.
Patty Holsinger asked if it was a done deal.
“We have spoken to three different people about it from the McFarland family, nobody can give us a straight answer,” said Patty Holsinger.
Gage said that GBT Realty is the equitable owner of that property.
Gage offered to give the Holsingers a piece of the property for free. After discussion, Alan and Patty Holsinger decided the amount of property offered was too small for their business, as well as other inhibitors.
Gage offered them his card for further negotiations.
“This last week has been awful, we were blindsided. Nobody told us anything,” said Patty Holsinger.
Gage said it was horrible, and he couldn’t understand why they would do that.
“[Donna and Ralph Glenn] are going to be sitting here with no home. At least I do have a home,” said Patty Holsinger.
Gage said he understood, and unfortunately he didn’t have anything to do with any of that.
“Are we going to have two months, are we going to have a month? That’s what we’re worried about,” said Donna Glenn.
Gage said he understood, and unfortunately that was between them and their landlord.
Gage will move forward with a new plan based on the suggestions from the meeting. He will send the new plan to Kirker for approval.
“I’ll get a new sketch worked up, I’ll send it to Jerry, make sure he’s okay with it, and everything looks fine, get it over to the retailer and make sure they’ll okay with it, and if they are, we’ll make a formal submittal. Then we’ll start that process, and come back and work through the specifics,” said Gage.
A motion by Councilman Francis to adjourn was seconded by Young, the council agreed.
Meeting minutes will be approved by Council at the next meeting, subject to revisions
