ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 1996 TAG: 9608280048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
Drugstore giant Rite-Aid intends to build a new store on a vacant 2-acre parcel at the edge of Raleigh Court in Southwest Roanoke as part of its recently announced expansion into the Roanoke Valley and Lynchburg markets.
But the plan may run afoul of the city's most popular council member, Nelson Harris, who lives just five doors away from the proposed location at the intersection of Brandon Avenue and Edgewood Street.
"I'll put it this way: My initial reaction was not positive, because Edgewood Street gets a lot of traffic right now," Harris said on Tuesday. "The Edgewood residents and I believe it will throw more traffic down the street. outright opposed. I can say that my initial reaction was unfavorable."
Edgewood Street already is a popular cut-through for traffic between Memorial and Brandon Avenues.
Harris said he learned of the proposed store in city documents forwarded to him early this month. Those came after the city Planning Commission on Aug. 7 unanimously recommended approval of a rezoning for the store.
Other residents of Edgewood were unaware of the project until Harris told them about it, he said.
The site used to be a Texaco gas station. But the station has closed, and the property is overgrown with weeds. Rite-Aid is proposing a one-story, 11,000-square-foot store with a drive-through pharmacy pick-up window.
Because the Texaco site is too small for the proposed store, the company needs a rezoning for an adjacent residentially zoned parcel.
Harris' concerns about the project could be significant because City Council will have the final say on the rezoning. The matter is expected to go before council for a public hearing and vote on Sept. 16.
Nothing in the city ethics code prohibits a councilman from voting on a rezoning in his own neighborhood.
Other council members on Tuesday said they'd heard no complaints about the rezoning from Harris or anyone else.
"It's such an attractive-looking building," Councilman Jim Trout said. "It fits in down there."
"If it's good for the city, I'll vote for it. If it's bad for the city, I'll vote against it," Councilman Carroll Swain said. "Since Nelson is involved, I'm going to give it some special consideration."
In a special election in May to fill a vacancy on council, Harris pulled 7,220 votes - more than any other candidate up for election - and was the only person in the field of 10 candidates who won every precinct.
The proposed store would be the first Rite-Aid in Roanoke, although the company has already closed on deals to build outlets in Salem and Vinton as part of 10-store expansion into Western Virginia. The Brandon site is within a couple of miles of three existing drugstores owned by Revco, the nation's second-largest drugstore chain after Rite-Aid.
G. Michael Pace Jr., a lawyer representing Rite-Aid's developer, said the company doesn't expect the store to generate additional traffic either on Brandon Avenue or Edgewood Street.
"This is a neighborhood drugstore, not a destination location," Pace said on Tuesday. "It's intended to serve the residents of the Edgewood neighborhood."
The intersection is already heavily traveled, and the Virginia Department of Transportation has begun to widen Brandon Avenue heading west from the intersection and a short piece of Edgewood at Brandon.
The company expects the vast majority of the store's customers to be nearby residents or people who already use the two roads in getting around town, Pace said.
"Unless that is understood, this concern that it will put additional traffic on these streets is misplaced," Pace said.
The Greater Raleigh Court Civic League didn't oppose the rezoning during the Planning Commission hearing. Michael Urbanski, the neighborhood group's president, said Rite-Aid held three meetings with the civic league and "bent over backwards" to address neighborhood concerns about the size of the store, landscaping surrounding it and the pharmacy pick-up window.
"They redesigned the whole building based on our concerns," Urbanski said.
But Harris said those discussions didn't include residents of Edgewood Street.
"I was a little disappointed that residents of that street were never told about it," he said.
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