Business

CVS seeks home on South Main Street

By Bill Moss, Published: July 1, 2012

The way Bub Hyder sees it, the city can't lose.

Hyder, a commercial developer and trucking company owner from Edneyville, wants to build a 12,000-square-foot CVS drugstore on land he owns on South Main Street. The drugstore chain is demanding a driveway permit that would allow free movement of traffic — left turns in and left turns out. City officials and the state Department of Transportation so far have said no. The drugstore chain was pursuing permission from the city until it pulled the request last December. Now Hyder and CVS real estate agents are trying to revive the project.
"They're really wanting this location and they're willing to do a lot to get it," Hyder said. CVS has volunteered to pay for a stoplight, he said, or post a bond that would pay for one if after a year left turns are shown to create a hazard.
Hyder and more than a dozen others gathered earlier this month in the parking lot of the closed Mr. Gatti's pizza restaurant to look at the situation. Among them were Hendersonville city manager Bo Ferguson, city planner Sue Anderson, CVS real estate officials, building contractors and traffic engineers for the drugstore, the city and DOT.
After last week's parking lot meeting, the traffic engineers met again Tuesday to look at various options to safely get traffic in and out of the drugstore.
DOT district engineer Steve Cannon said the engineers agreed to make sure they were using a common set of figures for the existing traffic. Traffic engineers for CVS planned to take the numbers and submit a revised traffic impact analysis of the proposed driveway, Cannon said.

Conflicting movement
There is no disputing that there's a lot of traffic on that part of South Main, a lot of conflicting traffic movements and several hurdles to an easy fix. The land abuts Mud Creek, which limits how far north a driveway could go. Main, King and Church converge just north of the creek. Southbound traffic stopped at the red light at the Fresh Market could back up far enough to block left turns from a CVS.
"I don't understand how they're going to work that out in a safe way," said Councilman Ron Stephens, who is generally regarded as one of the more pro-business members of the council. "I would love to see something go there but unless they can work something out (to control traffic) I think it's an accident waiting to happen."
The increased property value, cleanup of rundown buildings, CVS's offer to pay for a stoplight and Hyder's offer to grant an easement to city owned land behind his property would be good, he said. "All that is very positive but I do think there's a safety and traffic issue," he said.
Hyder says the new drugstore would raise the tax value of the property from $1.2 million to $4.5 million, generating an additional $34,000 a year in property taxes for the city and county.
CVS wants to move to South Main because Ingles plans to demolish the strip center where it is located now and build a new store. If it is forced out of the Spartanburg Highway spot, CVS wants to stay nearby because it has many customers whose prescriptions are based there.
Anderson, the city planner, said the driveway has been the one factor that has prevented the project from getting a green light.
"In reviewing the application with our traffic engineer the recommendation was to restrict that one driveway to a right in right out only," she said. "For the (northernmost) one that's been discussed all along, they want a full movement driveway."
"That part of the road is very congested," she said. "I think it's the most congested intersection in the city. What the city wants to see is that the safety of the community is preserved."
A stoplight has been brought up too. That decision "is up to the DOT," Anderson said. "I know there's an issue with how close the stoplights can be," she said.
Ferguson, the city manager, said the city will look at whatever proposal the traffic engineers draw and will defer to the DOT if its engineers deem the full-access driveway to be safe. The challenge, he said, is making sure that the traffic movement does not create a hazard for the driving public.
"We are fully supportive of trying to work it out and we are fully supportive of that redevelopment," he said. "People have gone to great lengths to convince us of something we agree with, that this would be a great improvement."