- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Texas firm presents plans for modified Dollar General store in Middletown
MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – A Texas firm is pushing ahead with a plan for a Dollar General store in Middletown.
Joe Dell of Plano, Texas-based Cross Development presented the latest building design to community members at the Middletown Area Town Hall meeting on Thursday evening at the Middletown Community Center. His presentation begins at the 1:04:50 mark in the video above.
Plans for the building, to be located at 20900 Highway 29, have met resistance from community members over the past two years.
This spring, the Board of Supervisors voted to uphold the Lake County Planning Commission’s January decision to deny a design review permit and mitigated negative declaration for the project.
County Counsel Anita Grant had said after the board’s action that the project lost its major use permit, which the planning commission had denied in 2016.
The board had previously granted Cross Development’s appeal of that 2016 planning commission decision on the major use permit, but made the permit contingent on the approval of the design review permit and mitigated negative declaration, as Lake County News has previously reported.
Lake County News reconfirmed with Grant this week that the major use permit was no longer in play because of the board denying the appeal earlier this year.
At Thursday’s meeting, Dell said the use permit for the project already has been approved.
However, because the previous permitting requirements were turned down, county planning staff have said Cross Development must submit a new application for the project.
The new plans call for reducing the store size to less than 8,000 square feet, which means the plan will not trigger a major use permit in the local commercial district zoning and can instead be approved under a minor use permit, based on county planning rules.
In an attempt to clarify the requirements, Lake County News contacted county planning staff.
Principal Planner Michalyn DelValle told Lake County News this week that, so far, she has no new application from Cross Development for the plan.
Community Development Director Bob Massarelli, who was on hand for Thursday’s presentation, told Lake County News that, “To the best of my knowledge our only comments to Cross Development has been that they need to apply for a design review permit. The work that they are doing as present(ed) at last week’s MATH meeting appears to (be) their preliminary work prior to submitting an application.”
At last Thursday’s meeting, Dell said he did not want to get into issues about people’s feelings about Dollar General.
“We are here simply to work on design,” Dell said.
Dell said all of the previous designs the company has presented have been denied by the community. So he said the goal is to have a design that the community will support.
He refused to discuss the building’s tenant – Dollar General – and wanted to focus instead on the look of the building and the site plan.
Nevertheless, several community members in the audience did bring up Dollar General, the Tennessee-based small box retailer that Cross Development is building stores for in Lake County.
So far, Dollar General has opened stores in Clearlake Oaks and Nice, and thanks to Dell’s efforts has gotten the go-ahead from the city of Lakeport for another store. There also have been efforts to get a store approved in Kelseyville, with Cross Development additionally seeking a site in Lucerne.
During the meeting, Dell’s presentation was interrupted a few times by audience members telling him that they didn’t want the store.
Dell showed comparisons to previous plans, noting that the biggest change is that the building’s size has been reduced from the formula 9,100-square-foot store common among Dollar Generals to a store that’s now 7,225 square feet.
“That’s a huge positive,” he said.
Dell said the entire building will have a roof overhang, wood gables, some exterior rock decoration, faux shutters and more windows.
“The overall look and design of the building has changed drastically,” he said, noting the new design is what they are proposing to take back to the county.
He said the color scheme for the building is completely optional. Dell said they could do purple, blue or burgundy, or more earth tone colors, noting the latter was frowned upon by the Lake County Planning Commission despite earth tones being used in other buildings in Middletown.
“Just go away,” one woman in the audience said at that point.
What won’t change is the building’s signage, Dell said.
One community member who said he had called Dell to offer input on design said he never got a call back, and suggested that the building would be a “heat sink” because it hasn’t been designed to deal either with the area’s heat or its rain.
Dell said there will be landscaping at the back of the project that will go far above the county’s landscaping requirement in order to screen it from nearby homes. He said there also will be parking lot lighting and trees.
John Hess, the District 1 representative on the Lake County Planning Commission, added that Cross Development will have to comply with lighting rules to uphold dark sky protections.
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