Beaufort planning board recommends approval for Huntley Plaza gas station with conditions and advisory concerns

The Beaufort Planning Board voted to recommend that the Board of Commissioners approve a special use permit to allow convenience-store retail with fuel sales at Huntley Plaza, 1507 Live Oak Street.

Planning staff described the resubmitted site plan and supporting materials, saying the developer added a secondary concrete containment for fuel tanks, an 8-foot opaque fence with Type A landscaping on three sides of above-ground tanks, a photometric lighting plan and voluntary additional landscaping. The packet also noted the project meets an exemption for a required landscaping plan because it does not expand impervious surface by more than 15 percent.

Bryce Pike, attorney for the applicant, told the board that the application meets the town's seven required findings and that the project "meets and exceeds these requirements," and that final design will incorporate NCDOT comments on driveway configuration.

Board members pressed the applicant and staff about specific details. Committee member raised concerns about interior parking-lot trees and whether several spaces adjacent to the building could be removed to provide screening; Pike said the plan before the board reflected what his client had authorized and invited the board to work with the developer on further refinements. Staff said some items (for example, fire-marshal review of retaining/containment details) will be addressed during building-permit and site-plan review and that NCDOT will review sidewalk and driveway approvals.

A number of board members expressed aesthetic and public-safety concerns about installing above-ground fuel tanks on a prominent town gateway. One member said, "I honestly cannot believe that we're doing above-ground storage tanks," calling buried tanks the contemporary norm. The town attorney advised that if the board wanted to make the burial of tanks a binding condition it would need facts in the record tying that requirement to a specific ordinance provision; absent such evidence, a requirement to bury tanks would likely be legally vulnerable.

After deliberation, the board approved a motion to recommend approval subject to two binding conditions: 1) the applicant must implement the presented landscape plan with a modification to incorporate two or more large shade trees in the parking-island immediately east of the fuel canopy, and 2) the applicant must provide a pedestrian path connecting the shown sidewalk to the businesses within Huntley Plaza to ensure safe pedestrian access.

The board also directed staff to transmit three advisory concerns to the Board of Commissioners: the appropriateness of above-ground fuel tanks in the town's gateway corridor, the need to screen the west side of the building where electrical panels and meters remain visible from Highway 101, and the adequacy of landscaping at the southwest corner of the parcel to screen the larger parking area. Those points were transmitted as nonbinding recommendations for commissioners to consider.

The motion carried on a voice vote; the planning board's recommendation and the verbatim motion will be forwarded to the Board of Commissioners for the quasi-judicial proceeding where sworn testimony and evidence will be taken.

The board noted staff's confirmation that new fuel-dispensing equipment will be subject to required regulation and inspections and that the applicant coordinated with NCDOT on driveway configuration. The Board of Commissioners will act later; the planning board's action was a recommendation rather than a final permit.

Ending: The planning board moved on to other agenda items after the recommendation, leaving the final decision to the Board of Commissioners.