Bumper stickers “CU2176.com” are already used by Sussex residents to draw attention to a serious rezoning precedent in the making - an abuse of conditional-use rules.
Conditional-use permits have long been given by Sussex County to allow light commercial or professional activities such as a small home-based lawn mower or car repair business on a single lot in a residential or farming area.
There have always been at least two or three conditions discussed at length by planning & zoning and council members during those hearings; they are then included in the ordinance granting such conditional use:
Hours of business operations are almost always limited to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with no or very limited weekend hours. Access to self-storage units is typically limited from dawn to dusk. Storage buildings or similar are typically required not to be visible from the main road or adjacent properties.
Signs are always very limited in number and size, such as one sign 32 square feet or smaller; and there are strict lighting and noise restrictions.
None of those conditions – the very basis of past conditional uses – could be met or were even considered in CU2176 as 7-Eleven franchises require 24-hour, 365-days-a-year operations (open even on Christmas Day). To limit crime, since robberies of convenience stores are a huge problem, the entire site, especially the unattended gas and diesel pumps, must be brightly illuminated all night long, and of course there will also be lots of noise all day and night long. Parking areas are often littered hangouts.
I feel so sorry for the Route 24 neighbors, the entire Angola area and the private single-family home communities recently approved across the street. Such C-3 type projects should clearly be located only in commercially zoned centers with easier and safer in-and-out access, impossible to build at this busy intersection. (A rezoning application CZ-1855 to C-3 Commercial was denied by Sussex Council Dec.11, 2018, for many solid reasons.)
But as a Wall Street cartoon quoted a lawyer: “When one door closes, loopholes appear.” (The cartoonist may have read the Cape Gazette.)
CU 2176 is an abuse of conditional use! Let us not go down that road.
Jens Wegscheider
Lewes
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