WAL-MART Officials grant zoning requests

The store is the major part of a bigcommercial project.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- The city's zoning hearing board has granted the developer of a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter the zoning relief it wanted to build the 212,242-square-foot store.
The board had a four-hour hearing Monday on requests by Cedarwood Development Inc. of Akron for a list of zoning variances and/or interpretations in its favor for the 45-acre site on Pa. Route 18 between the Shenango Valley YMCA and Stupka Motors.
In the end, the board granted the company everything it sought.
The project, dubbed Hermitage Crossing, is five developments on land owned by George and John Kraynak and zoned for highway commercial use.
It includes a Wal-Mart Supercenter on about 30 acres, a 65,000- to 70,000-square-foot separate shopping center featuring about eight shops on nearly nine acres, and three restaurants, each on its own parcel, ranging from one to about two acres each.
Wal-Mart will buy its parcel, and Cedarwood will buy the shopping center site. Each of the restaurants will buy its own site, said Atty. Dan Danilek, representing Cedarwood.
Cedarwood said it needed exceptions to city zoning regulations to build the store.
Variances granted
The three-member zoning hearing board voted to grant a variance allowing the store to have up to 600 square feet of front wall signs facing Pa. Route 18.
The zoning regulations spell out a maximum of only 200 square feet on one wall, but Cedarwood said that would be insufficient for a building that is 590 feet long.
The company had initially asked for 909 square feet of front wall signs but scaled back its request.
The board also voted to grant a variance allowing Cedarwood to erect a single driveway entrance sign that advertises both Wal-Mart and the stores in the shopping center.
City regulations permit only the name of a store or stores on a particular property on free-standing signs, and Danilek said Cedarwood could legally erect one sign for Wal-Mart and a second for the shopping center but preferred to put all of the names on one sign.
The board ruled that Cedarwood doesn't need to install a pine tree buffer zone along most of its rear property line to separate it from a residential district.
It turns out that the Kraynaks are retaining ownership of a narrow strip of highway commercial-zoned property behind the project site along Pine Hollow Run. That means Hermitage Crossing doesn't abut residential property along most of its rear.
The company will meet buffer requirements where it does abut one residential property near the northwest corner.
Cross-traffic lanes
The board granted a variance from a regulation that would require perpendicular cross-traffic travel lanes for every 20 parking spaces in a row in the store's 1,000-car lot.
Consultant Charles Wooster, a traffic engineer, said the cross traffic lane would be a safety hazard, creating more chances of pedestrians' being hit by cars traveling through the center of the parking lot.
Finally, the board granted a variance allowing Cedarwood to defer building a connecting road to vacant land off the northwest corner of the site.
City rules require providing access routes to all adjoining properties, but Cedarwood said the only feasible site for an access road to that particular property is through a wetlands, and the state said no road should be built until a development plan is in place for the vacant land.