This Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011, Ingles Markets will ask Asheville City Council for special permission to build a big-box store on Smoky Park Highway in West Asheville that would violate existing standards which promote pedestrian safety in large parking lots, reduce light pollution, and require landscaping to provide shade and address environmental issues.
Council should say no. Development standards are meaningless if they are not enforced consistently and evenhandedly.
Ingles is not claiming that following the existing standards would cause it undue hardship — the usual grounds for granting what city planners call a “variance” from the rules governing developments. Rather, Ingles representatives say the company simply doesn’t want to change its prototype superstore design: a highly visible storefront with a very bright gas-station canopy.
Ingles Markets is applying for the variances under the controversial legal procedure called “conditional zoning.” Despite other virtues, CZ has the serious flaw of not requiring a developer seeking the variance to show a hardship or technical difficulty. Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods activists say this is a case of a developer exploiting conditional zoning as a loophole to allow City Council to practice normally illegal “spot zoning” — changing the rules arbitrarily for one development, but not another.
The Asheville Planning and Development Department professional staff and the Technical Review Committee are recommending that City Council deny Ingles Markets these variances. The planners say granting such substantial and unnecessary departures from city safety and environmental ordinances would undercut the intent of the standards and set a bad precedent for future developers to demand exceptions for convenience rather than hardship or other difficulty. They also point out that other recent big-box developments — Walmart on Swannanoa River Road and Hendersonville Road, and Target off Tunnel Road — have met the requirements without any problem.
The staffers and a rapidly growing number of concerned community groups and citizens point to three areas where Ingles, they say, is intent on disregarding city environmental and safety rules that were developed with broad community input and that meet reasonable, national standards:
- Light pollution: Extremely bright light canopies such as many gas-station chains are installing to grab attention are widely considered dangerous because they distract and blind motorists at night. Ingles wants to install a canopy that would emit between 290% and 400% more light than the city’s light-pollution ordinance allows. Asheville’s ordinance, notes Bernard Arghiere of the Astronomy Club of Asheville, conforms to moderate national standards and is not even a more restrictive “night-sky” ordinance such as Waynesville and Brevard enforce.
- Tree shade in parking lots: Along with the discomfort and danger of hot car interiors, large, unshaded asphalt parking lots are major causes of the “urban heat island” effect that makes cities much hotter than surrounding countryside, and that “cooks” an assortment of common air pollutants to create the “red” and “orange” levels of ozone pollution that keep kids, asthmatics, and the elderly from going outside. Ingles wants to plant only 40% of the city’s required number of trees for a large parking lot.
- Pedestrian safety in parking lots: Large, busy parking lots, packed with cars unexpectedly backing out of spaces with little peripheral vision for the driver, can be very dangerous for pedestrians to negotiate — especially if they are elderly or have kids and a shopping cart in tow. Although the city requires big boxes to install a landscaped walkway for pedestrians down the center of a large parking lot, Ingles wants to install a sidewalk around the outer perimeter of the 846-space lot, and none down the center.
Our city councilmembers have repeatedly stated they want Asheville’s development rules to be fair, objective and predictable. We’ll find out if they really mean it this Tuesday.
For more information:
- “Asheville City Council to decide Ingles supermarket proposal,” Feb. 19, 2011, Asheville Citizen-Times. (Has several quotes by Steve Rasmussen.)
- http://wiki.ashevillecan.org/Research_and_Information/Conditional_Zoning/CZ_Ingles_Smoky_Park_Hwy”>Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods wiki on Ingles Smoky Park Hwy.
To take action:
- Email Asheville City Council at: AshevilleNCCouncil@ashevillenc.gov
- Speak out at City Council’s public hearing on the Ingles conditional-zoning request on Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011, starting at 5 pm, fifth floor of Asheville City Hall.
Steve Rasmussen is a development activist who lives in West Asheville and shops regularly at Ingles. He can be contacted at stevencrasmussen@gmail.com.