AutoZone has first reading at Sunbury Council

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Auto­Zone Project Man­ager Jeff Berneb­urg attended last Wednesday’s Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing for the first read­ing of Ordi­nance 2012–15. The ordi­nance would approve the plan review and zon­ing cer­tifi­cate for AutoZone’s pro­posed store in Sun­bury Mills Plaza.

Mem­bers of the Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion already approved the Auto­Zone pro­posal at the Mon­day, July 23, plan­ning and zon­ing meeting.

Berneb­urg described a 6,815 square foot sin­gle story brick build­ing with 39 park­ing spaces, a metal stand­ing seam roof, a mon­u­ment sign and a brick dump­ster enclosure.

Dur­ing the June zon­ing meet­ing com­mis­sion mem­ber Joe Gochenour ques­tioned how close the Auto­Zone entrance is to the plaza’s ser­vice road inter­sec­tion with South Miller Drive. Gochenour said dri­vers enter­ing the plaza and wait­ing to turn in to the Auto­Zone store could cause traf­fic to back up on to South Miller.

The plan Auto­Zone brought to the July zon­ing ses­sion flipped the site plan and made the entrance to the site far­ther to the east, eas­ing poten­tial traf­fic prob­lems caused by dri­vers enter­ing Auto­Zone from the west.

“This plan has been before your plan­ning and zon­ing, and we came up with a site plan that meets all the zon­ing ques­tions about this devel­op­ment,” Berneb­urg said.

Asked when Auto­Zone plans to open the new store, Berneb­urg said every­thing depends on plan approval.

“Auto­Zone has no solid date,” Berneb­urg said. “After your approval we will final­ize the lease and put the project out to bid.”

Vil­lage Con­sult­ing Engi­neer Wes Hall, CT Con­sul­tants, said the vil­lage is wait­ing for final site plan and final grad­ing and util­i­ties before issu­ing approval to pro­ceed with the project.

Ordi­nance 2012–15 has two more read­ings, and if approved, a 30-day statu­tory wait­ing period before it becomes effec­tive and con­struc­tion could begin.

In his report to coun­cil, vil­lage admin­is­tra­tor Dave Mar­tin said that Sun­bury Nazarene Church on Ohio 61, adja­cent to the Free­dom Park entrance, plans to tear down the par­son­age on the other side of the park entrance.

“They would like to part­ner with vil­lage on improv­ing the dri­ve­way to Free­dom Park,” Mar­tin said. “They want to cut the bank down in front of house to improve the view and for safety, and widen the park driveway.”

Mar­tin said the house would be burned by BST&G in Sep­tem­ber as a train­ing exercise.

Mar­tin also said he has met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Vol­un­teer Energy and Bor­der Energy about Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion of Ohio gas and elec­tric aggre­ga­tion certification.

“We have to make a deter­mi­na­tion if we’re going with these two com­pa­nies,” Mar­tin said. “This is a jump­ing off point; this is all part of going through the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process.”

Sunbury’s web­site is located at < sunburyvillage.com >.

Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meets the first and third Wednes­day of every month at 7:30 p.m., third floor coun­cil cham­bers, Sun­bury Town Hall. Coun­cil com­mit­tees meet one hour before reg­u­larly sched­uled coun­cil ses­sions. All vil­lage coun­cil and coun­cil com­mit­tee meet­ings are open to the public.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.