WILMINGTON — Residents off Piner Road will not be seeing a new Dollar General store opening in their neighborhood anytime soon after the New Hanover County Planning Board voted 5-1 to deny a rezoning request.
The project, which was planned for 813 and 817 Piner Road, was first discussed in December of last year; the developer, Par 5 Development, was requesting a rezoning changing the use of the property from office and institutional to business as well as a small portion rezoned residential.
There are currently nine different Dollar General stores in the Wilmington area, but the selected location for the developer would help local residents who do not have access to any nearby neighborhood stores, according to the application. The developer claimed by allowing the store it would offer residents a store within walking and biking distance, as well as capture traffic on Piner Road.
But county planning staff did not see things the same way.
“A retail use placed in this location would not be as likely to assist in creating a neighborhood-scale commercial node for nearby residents because of its close proximity to a higher intensity commercial node. Instead, it is more likely that locating a retail use on the subject property would encourage additional commercial uses on the two existing residential lots east of Highgrove Estates, with Myrtle Grove Middle School becoming the boundary for the commercial node,” a county staff report states.
