Dollar General eyes Main Street site

The Madison Town Council postponed making a decision at its Oct. 7 regular meeting on approving the site plan for a proposed Dollar General store that may be coming to Madison.

The store has applied to build on a business-zoned vacant lot at the south end of town between F.M. Graves Veterinary Clinic and the former ABC store/sheriff’s office on Main Street. Representatives of the firm designing the building submitted the site plan to the town planning commission a few months ago, Councilor Dan Painter said after the meeting.

However, the site plan for the proposed 9,000-square foot building was not approved at the meeting as members of the council voiced concerns regarding several details of the site, including the color of brick being used by the store and the layout of the parking lot.

“We’d love to see the store here, we’d like to see it as a good addition to our town,” Painter said. “We don’t have a lot of land left so we’d like to see as good quality a building as possible put in – we’re not trying to make it the Taj Mahal of Dollar General (buildings) but that’s not to say there can’t be some improvement.”

Representatives of the store were not present at the council’s regular Thursday, Oct. 7 meeting. However, Lynchburg-based survey and engineering firm Hurt and Proffitt, which is designing the building for their client GBT Realty, sent two representatives, Troy Williams and Adam Bryant, to relay any issues back to the firm. The building, once built to town and Dollar General specifications, would be sold or leased by the realty company to Dollar General, Williams said at the meeting. 

“GBT Reality, who is our client, comes in and gets a site approved by Dollar General and they either turn it over to Dollar General or they lease it to Dollar General for a number of years,” Williams said at the meeting. “I know (the realty company) has been very amicable about the materials on the building and we went back and relooked at the lighting plan … so they’ve been through a process as far as making changes with all the people who’ve been reviewing (the plan) so I’m sure that they would take the suggestions that you all may have.”

 Town councilors gave the pair a list of recommendations, including changing the color of the building material to a red brick and muting the color of the metal roof, that would need to be changed or reexamined before a green-light could be given to the building project.

“So you’d like to see a better landscaping plan, the roof you’d like to change from the (unpainted metal) to a painted dark green or red … and then have a reduction of the (parking lot) drive aisles from 40 to possibly 24 feet,” Williams said. “We’d be glad to defer until the next meeting.”

Even with the suggested changes, Mayor Willie Lamar said the deal is likely to go forward after the town’s regular Nov. 4 meeting.

“I think (the Dollar General) is a good opportunity for the town and for the community,” Lamar said. “It will change, it obviously change some of the complexion of the town and the devil’s in the details, but the property’s zoned commercial so they complied with the zoning … I think that it overall will be good for the town and the community by allowing more commerce to stay in the community.”

Also at the meeting, town councilors:

• Discussed the possibility of imposing fees for infractions of zoning laws; however no action was taken on the idea, because councilors called for more study of the issue.

• Discussed the issue of unlit street lights and how to bring it to attention of Rappahannock Electric Cooperative. According to Roach one of the three lights that were mentioned in the meeting as no longer coming on has been reported several times and not fixed.

• Decided to write a resolution thanking Early for the time and effort he put into working as the town’s attorney.