DATE: Friday, June 20, 1997                 TAG: 9706200697

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW DOLAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   54 lines

FOOD LION DEVELOPERS BOW TO PROTESTS CHESAPEAKE CITIZENS SAY THEY WANT THEIR RURAL AREA TO STAY EXACTLY THAT WAY.

So fierce was the citizen opposition over the following months to a Food Lion shopping center on Dock Landing Road near Interstate 664 that its developers, Dock Landing Associates, withdrew a rezoning application before the city Planning Commission on Wednesday.

Most local civic leagues have voted to oppose the project, citing the need to protect the rural character of the neighborhood and to ward off any increase in traffic and crime.

``I shop at Food Lion on Taylor Road, and I can be there in five minutes,'' resident Manette Britt said Thursday. ``Convenience is not the only factor when we plan for commercial development. We have a comprehensive plan for the city, and we should follow it.

Although his organization supported the Food Lion in order to ease traffic in commercial areas on Taylor Road, Dunedin Civic League President James Gilliam said, ``It's quite possible that we would now reconsider our position, after so many civic leagues now oppose it.''

Dock Landing Associates said the project is down, but not out.

``In an effort to respond to many of the comments and concerns expressed by the citizens, we find that we do not have enough time to incorporate these suggestions in our Rezoning Application before it has to go to the Planning Commission,'' Dock Landing Associates' attorney John L. Cote wrote to city Planing Director Brent R. Nielson this week.

The developers said they plan to file a revised application with the city soon.

Raeford Eure, whose Hoggard/ Eure Associates engineering firm represents the Food Lion application, said, ``In my own mind, if you could take a secret poll from every resident without their neighbor knowing, I believe it would come out for the Food Lion.''

Eure said a plan to erect a much-needed middle school on nearby property fell after wetlands requirements would not allow for the needed acreage.

But he said his firm is still trying to work with a local developer to build single-family housing adjacent to the proposed Food Lion. Those houses, Eure said, would assuage residents' fears that this commercial project would be the first of many for the area.

The seven-acre site at the northwest intersection of Dock Landing Road and Emerald Woods Drive sits not far from Exit 12 of Interstate 664 in Western Branch. The shopping proposal called for a 38,000-square-foot Food Lion, an 8,450-square-foot Revco drug store, 5,400 square feet of other shops and a gas station.

Though many believe that commercial developments are bound to crop up near these newly opened interchanges and may require a new overlay district to control growth, Dock Landing residents along the largely rural, two-lane road want to keep their land zoned residential. ILLUSTRATION: Map

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