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Richmond Hill Council approves plans for strip shopping center, rezoning of Parkers Square property
RH City Hall
Brent Zell
Updated: Feb 3, 2016, 4:34 AM
Published: Feb 3, 2016, 4:37 AM

The Richmond Hill City Council on Tuesday approved the site and landscape plans, and a building-elevation request for a strip shopping center that has listed Starbucks as a tenant.

The property is located at the corner of Ford Avenue and Rushing Street.

At a City Council meeting last month, Starbucks was listed as a tenant in a 5,000-square-foot development. The Hutton Co. had filed a request for a variance on a perimeter buffer requirement for reduction of a landscape buffer between the property and nearby Richmond Hill United Methodist Church. The variance was approved, with one of the conditions being that the fence be a minimum of 6 feet tall in the back of the property in order to prevent people from parking in the church parking lot and going to the commercial property.

Also Tuesday, the council approved rezoning 4.78 acres on Timber Trail Road from neighborhood to multi-family residential. The property is behind Parker’s convenience store in Parker’s Square, which is at the corner of Timber Trail Road and Ford Avenue.

Bill Bishop, vice president of real estate and development for Parker’s, told council members that the property was developed a few years ago, but that it’s not an appropriate place for business anymore.

“I think just the traffic patterns and the fact that you’re so far removed from any of the rest of the commercial development just doesn’t lend itself to future development,” he said. “And the highest and best use I think in this area is certainly residential.”

Bishop said the existing building on the property can be converted to residential use once the leases on the building expire.

Councilman Russ Carpenter moved to approve the rezoning, with the conditions that the commercial perimeter buffering required under commercial zoning will remain in place, any variation from the previous site plan must come before council for approval, and the goal is to protect adjacent residential property that predates the development by at least 30 years. Councilwoman Jan Bass seconded, and the motion with conditions was approved.

In other business Tuesday:
• Carpenter was re-elected as mayor pro tem.
• Council heard the first reading of a text amendment to a zoning ordinance in order to put a sporting-goods store with gun sales at 3766 Highway 17, Suite 103. The text-amendment application was submitted by Mike Pinault of Pinault’s Defensive Solutions.
• Council approved a building-elevation request for the remodel of Clyde’s at the intersection of Highway 17 and Ford Avenue.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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