Planning board reviews town code amendment on gas stations, signs and small event spaces

At an Aug. 18 public hearing, the town Planning Board considered CTA 2025-04, a staff-requested text amendment to the town's land development ordinance that would revise several use definitions and development standards, Planning staff said. The board opened and closed the hearing with no public comments and then discussed how the changes would affect downtown event spaces and the relationship between the use table and the town's land-use plan.

Planning staff told the board that the amendment establishes the term "environmentally sensitive areas" to describe a range of non-developable lands, adds "convenience store" to the retail sales and service category while establishing "gas station" as a separate use with improved development standards, creates a new projecting-sign type (covering blade and suspended signs and allowing multi-tenant and multi-floor buildings), offers an alternative layout for the Type C buffer that would allow a brick or stone wall to replace part of the required planting, and standardizes the minimum lot width for townhouses across zoning districts where townhouses are permitted. "Staff recommends approval of the proposed town code amendment and it is reasonable and in the public's best interest," Planning staff said.

Board members pressed staff on how the amendment would operate in practice. One member asked whether the draft change to the banquet-hall definition would allow larger banquet facilities in commercial districts. Planning staff replied, "We are not changing anything about Banquet Hall, the larger version that you're talking about. So that is currently in O and I. We're leaving it in O and I because we do feel it's an assembly use." Staff added that the amendment is intended to allow smaller, downtown-friendly event spaces that the North Carolina Building Code does not classify as assembly uses until they exceed 50 people: "North Carolina building code has a threshold of 50 people. That's the magic number. ... that's what we're really facilitating is these kind of little flex spaces that are more urban that we're gonna find in our downtown and our form based districts."

Other members asked how changes to the use table — for example, replacing "convenience store" with a separate "gas station" use — should be reconciled with the town's land-use plan and whether the plan would need amendments where zoning and uses no longer align. A board member warned that moving uses can limit where certain businesses can locate: "We did the new land use plan thinking that we weren't trying to minimize the amount of land use plan amendments we do, but it's kinda hard to do that when uses change or flop and move." Planning staff said the land-use plan is not perfect at a parcel-by-parcel level and that peers handle convenience stores and gas pumps in different ways; staff noted that a convenience store "in and of itself is a retail store." The board discussed whether the town would rely on staff-level land-use-plan adjustments or process formal plan amendments when uses change, but the transcript does not record a formal direction or vote on that point.

The public hearing record shows no speakers signed up on CTA 2025-04. The meeting record in the transcript includes a staff recommendation to approve the amendment and several board questions but does not record a formal vote on CTA 2025-04 during the segment reviewed.

The amendment also includes technical changes to townhouse lot-width standards and the Type C buffer option, which staff said would make enforcement and use clearer. Examples cited by staff of small downtown event spaces included Lucy Blues and the Citadel as existing local venues that fit the smaller-event-space model rather than the larger banquet-hall model.

No formal vote on CTA 2025-04 is recorded in the provided transcript; staff entered the agenda abstract and supporting documents into the official record and recommended approval.