It doesn’t resemble a full-scale industrial area, lacking loud machinery, smokestacks or large truck traffic, but a section of Riverside Drive and East Pine Street is actually zoned for such use — which officials want to alter.
City planners are recommending that 14 parcels with 12 different addresses along those and other streets in Mount Airy be rezoned from their present M-1 (industrial) classification to B-2 (General Business). These make up 18.5 acres altogether.
A public hearing on the proposed rezoning is scheduled this coming Thursday during a meeting of the Mount Airy Board of Commissioners which begins at 6 p.m.
The parcels involved are largely situated at the corner of East Pine Street and Riverside Drive, extending from the latter to East Independence Boulevard.
Included among that group of 14 are two governmental facilities, the city Public Works Department headquarters at 440 E. Pine — containing three parcels in all — and that of Mount Airy City Schools, 351 Riverside Drive.
The area in question also contains a N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles License Plate Agency, an auto repair shop, a convenience store and other entities — but no manufacturers.
Addressing — and correcting — such unusual zoning situations around town is one of Planning Director Andy Goodall’s top goals for 2024, he said at a planning session of city officials in mid-February.
Goodall mentioned multiple areas where property is zoned for industrial use, but shouldn’t be, an issue that initially came onto the radar screen of city planners in 2021.
“We’d really like to revisit this,” he said, which resulted in the rezoning proposal at hand.
The status quo apparently reflects an earlier time in Mount Airy when industry was booming and there were more demands on setting aside areas for manufacturing growth where that was seen as the principle use of such locations.
Other property now eyed for rezoning from M-1 to B-2 includes:
• The Marathon Super C convenience store at 335 E. Pine St. and another site at 423 E. Pine St. with the same owner, Hutchens Petroleum Corp. of Stuart, Virginia;
• Properties owned by East Pine Mount Airy LLC at 330, 334, 336 and 338 East Pine, occupied by a day-care facility, transmission shop and used-car dealership;
• Sites at 137 Riverside Drive and 120 N. Gilmer St. owned by Red Oak Development LLC, where the DMV license plate facility, a hardware wholesaler, a salon and an auto sales office are located;
• Vacant retail/office property at 420 E. Pine St. owned by Grand Investment Properties LLC of Pilot Mountain;
• An empty sliver of land in the 300 block of East Independence Boulevard which is owned by the city government.
The General Business zoning would seem more appropriate for the Riverside Drive-East Pine section, given the presence of commercial enterprises there, while also accommodating the governmental uses.
Changing the zoning to B-2 reflects both the present usage of the parcels and future land uses prescribed in a long-range comprehensive plan for Mount Airy, planning documents state.
The Mount Airy Planning Board, an advisory group to the commissioners, voted 8-0 on April 22 to recommend the rezoning. No one spoke in opposition to the move at that session, to which affected property owners had been invited.
U.S. 52-U.S. 601 also eyed
Goodall, the city planning director, has cited another area in town where a similar zoning oddity exists, the U.S. 52-U.S. 601 business corridor.
Areas around that intersection are zoned M-1 (Industrial), whenever commercial entities have tended to proliferate there over the years instead.
Goodall indicated that this situation will be addressed at some point in addition to that in the East Pine Street-Riverside Drive area.
“You don’t need manufacturers sitting where Wendy’s is right now,” he said of the fast-food restaurant on U.S. 601 (Rockford Street).
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