Residents on the city’s growing southeast side expressed their displeasure with a proposed Dollar General Market coming to a track of land near the McKay Road and Progress Parkway intersection.

Second Circle Investments, LLC, wants to construct a Dollar General Market just south of the Twin Lakes subdivision (photo) but needs a special exception variance because the property is zoned Business Neighborhood (BN), which requires structures to be less than 10,000 square feet.

The Dollar General Market proposal is 10,640 square feet.

Briane House, an attorney with the Greenfield law firm Pritzke & Davis, presented the special variance request Tuesday to the City of Shelbyville’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA). House reiterated to the crowd in attendance that the property, which was zoned BN nearly two decades ago as part of the original Twin Lakes planned unit development project, would not even need a public hearing like Tuesday’s if the building, like traditional Dollar General stores, was under 10,000 square feet.

Dollar General Markets require larger buildings to house refrigerator coolers.

“Dollar General Market compared to Dollar General offers a different product mix including produce, coolers with frozen foods, refrigerated foods, and meats to give it more a feel of a grocery store rather than a Dollar General convenience store which is cleaning supplies and laundry supplies and things like that,” said House.

The objections from various residents in the area included traffic patterns associated with this type of store, public safety, landscape requirements and the footprint the store will have on the residential area.

There are two Dollar General stores already located in Shelbyville at 315 E. Broadway and 951 Miller Avenue.

An approval of the special variance request is only the first step in the process to start building. Once the variance is approved, Second Circle Investments must provide a detailed site plan that will go through the city’s Technical Review Committee where it will be thoroughly scrutinized by different departments, including emergency services.

The next step would then be a public hearing before the Plan Commission. A favorable recommendation would then be needed for approval by the Shelbyville Common Council.

The Board of Zoning Appeals started listing restrictions that would need to be in place before the variance could be approved. City Plan Director Adam Rude did not have enough information at hand to say what restrictions could legally be attached.

Therefore, the BZA voted to continue the variance discussion to its March meeting.

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