Dollar General plan for Columbia suffers defeat

At the close of the business week, Tennessee-based Dollar General had not decided whether to appeal the Tuolumne County Planning Commission’s rejection of its proposal to build a store about a half-mile from Columbia State Historic Park.

Following a public hearing Wednesday evening at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, the commission voted 5-2 to deny the plan for a 9,100-square-foot general store on Parrotts Ferry Road at Howser Lane on the corridor leading into the park’s south entrance.

The commissioners who opposed the project cited findings by the Community Resources Agency regarding building design, signage and traffic. Dollar General and developer Cross Development of Texas were allowed 10 days to appeal the decision to the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors.

“We’ve talked with our real estate manager and are evaluating our options and haven’t decided if appealing is something we want to do,” said Dan MacDonald, senior director of corporate communications with Dollar General.

The defeat clearly was a disappointment, he said. “There’s a need in that community for a low-cost alternative, and we will bring a lot of value with low prices on brand-name products. We had worked pretty hard to see that our design worked with building codes and standards of the community.”

Addressing the traffic concerns, he added, “Our stores typically have about 30 parking spots. We’re a small-box discount retailer and we don’t typically add to the traffic load. We’re talking about the entrance to a state park – that’s the traffic. We’d typically be a stop along the way, not the destination.”

About 200 people attended the meeting at the church on Jackson Street. It began at 6 p.m. and lasted nearly four hours.

Bev Shane, director of the county’s Community Resources Agency, gave the commission a staff report near the start of the public hearing. She noted that the agency had received 130 letters of comment from residents on the project. Main areas of concern included building design, signage and traffic impacts.

Initially, she said, Dollar General’s plan was for just a box store, but the developer worked with county staff and did a significant redesign. “The overwhelming comments we received is that this project is not compatible with the historic community of Columbia,” Shane said. The most common complaint is that “this project, the way it’s been proposed, the way it’s been designed, does not fit in with the scale and historic motif of Columbia.”

Shane pointed out that many people also voiced concern over Dollar General competing with local stores for shoppers’ dollars. But she reminded the commission that it cannot regulate competition. “That’s up to the private sector, to the businesses, to be competitive.”

Joe Dell with Cross Development, which owns the 1.4-acre parcel and would own the building and lease it to Dollar General, addressed concerns over the appearance of the store. “I agree the initial conception design was way off base, just a box. Our consultant took a stab at what was going to be needed, and it was wrong.”

But he said that after working with the community, he thinks a design has been achieved that fits well, including faux iron doors and shutters and use of red brick, full awnings and wood siding. “There was a painstaking effort to get to this design,” Dell said.

A big part of the opposition to the proposed store, Dell said, was the belief that it didn’t fit along the drive into the park. If the plan had been to build along the north entrance to Columbia, he said, he’d have agreed 100 percent. The 9-mile route he took into the park Wednesday “is one of the most beautiful drives I’ve taken,” he said, with not a single building except one storage facility. He called the south entrance along Parrotts Ferry Road “a different story. It has multiple commercial properties.” Along the 1.5 to 2 miles to the park entrance, he said, “there are no less than 18 different structures.”

Dozens of people – residents, businesspeople and government employees – spoke in opposition to the store. Among them was Leslie Hartzell, a preservation officer with the California Department of Parks and Recreation and chief of its cultural resources division.

She told the commission that there are only 142 national historic sites in California. Twenty-nine are in possession of California State Parks, and Columbia is one of them, she said. She warned the commission that the National Park Service assesses historical landmarks regularly “to assess that a high degree of historical integrity is maintained” and it can delist sites because of “cumulative effects of incompatible new construction.”

Greg Martin, California State Parks sector superintendent for Columbia, said the department is not against business or Dollar General, but does not believe it is an appropriate fit for the location. “Let’s make sure Columbia lives into the future as an example that’s not fragmented by commercial development of this magnitude,” he told the commission.

Just a few people spoke in support of the proposal. One was Columbia resident Heidi Wall. “Columbia has an airport, a state park, a college, and it should be one of the main economic and tourist powerhouses for Tuolumne County, but it isn’t,” she said. Looking around the room at the audience, she added, “We have a relatively small group of very well-organized and vocal activists that have characterized every new endeavor as some sort of existential threat to Columbia’s existence.”

She and her husband own property in Columbia, she said, and are concerned that if the Dollar General project doesn’t go forward, their property value could go down. “It’s gotten to the point where no one can develop anything,” she said, adding that Columbia residents deserve a modern standard of quality and variety in their business community.

As the commission was preparing to vote on the matter, Commissioner John LaTorre, who was participating via conference call, said, “Dollar General is a profitable corporation, and that tells me they offer something the community needs.” He said he supported the chain’s Jamestown store, “but Columbia is a special case,” and he was moved by the testimony of the residents. He was among the five to vote against the project.

Commissioner Jerry Baker, who was joined by Commissioner Cole Przybyla in supporting the project, said he thought it could go forward with additional conditions to address community concerns. It might involve big things like moving the building’s placement on the lot and making it look “less like a movie set,” but he said he would rather give the developer the chance to address concerns than reject the proposal outright.

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Dollar General plan for Columbia suffers defeat."