Many of you probably remember that, back in 2005, Reagan Outdoor Advertising attempted to secure an up-zoning of their property on the northwest corner of Woodland and IH35 which is currently zoned General Retail (GR). They proposed to build their headquarters on the lot which included offices as well as warehouse, sign printing, and chemical storage which required portions of the lot to be zoned Commercial Services (CS). After SRCC and the immediate neighbors fought hard, no zoning change was granted but the final approved site plan had many residents concerned because it retained the same warehouse and sign printing facilities in the drawings. Fortunately Reagan never built the facility and, last year, with more involvement from SRCC and the neighbors, the Planning Commission voted to deny their last-minute site plan extension requests and the site plan died. This was particularly good news for the neighborhood because it meant that a new site plan would have to adhere to the newly revised Heritage Tree Ordinance and save many of the trees on the wooded lot that would have been lost with the old site plan.
Now, Reagan is back with a new plan but, unfortunately, they still don’t feel that it is in their interest to develop the lot under the current GR zoning which would mean an office or retail building. Instead, they believe that a commercial storage facility like Public Storage or Storage Depot would be ideally suited to the location. This development would require an up-zoning to Commercial Services (CS) as well although they would agree to limit all other CS uses of the land so that only commercial storage would be allowed.
