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HomeGoods seeks guidance from Lordstown
By Ed Runyan
LORDSTOWN
Village council’s 3-2 vote Jan. 22 against approving a cul-de-sac for Hallock Young Road as part of the TJX/HomeGoods warehouse project has sent HomeGoods engineers back to the drawing board.
But on Tuesday night, Mark Walker, vice president of real estate for HomeGoods, needed some guidance from council as to what plans to put on the drawing board.
So did Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill, who focused much of his attention at Tuesday’s village planning commission meeting on council members Karen Jones, Robert Bond and Lamar Liming, the three who voted against the cul-de-sac.
When the 80-minute discussion ended, it was agreed that instead of a cul-de-sac, HomeGoods would redesign Hallock Young to be a through-road.
The planning commission voted unanimously Jan. 14 to recommend the cul-de-sac to council, but members expressed their willingness Tuesday to change their recommendation if it would decide the issue one way or the other and allow HomeGoods to meet its March 1 construction start goal.
“I don’t want to see us lose this project,” Councilman Don Reider said.
The plan that developed Tuesday would be for HomeGoods to redraw its engineering plans in the next three weeks so the planning commission can meet Feb. 27 to recommend them to council.
The first council meeting after that would be March 4, and council could re-vote that day and approve the through-road as an emergency that would go into effect immediately if all five eligible council members voted for emergency passage, Hill said.
Hill polled Jones, Bond and Liming several times, asking if they would accept various things and vote yes for emergency passage March 4 if the design was changed to a through-road. They all appeared to agree.
Bond said he could not promise he would vote yes for passage of the new design ordinance, but Hill noted that only a majority of five was needed for that passage.
Jones and Bond each took to the podium to explain their opposition to the cul-de-sac, quoting from studies and Wikipedia regarding the dangers to children playing in the “circle” part of a cul-de-sac, “isolation” of people living on them and the maximum length a street should be with a cul-de-sac.
Liming said he voted against the cul-de-sac because “I feel as a councilman, I should represent all of the residents of the village.”
Differing opinions were voiced as to what percentage of people living on Hallock Young and in the village were in favor of a cul-de-sac. Hallock Young resident Carla Click said she spoke with the people in each home on Hallock Young, and about 23 of 30 favored the cul-de-sac.
Hill said there have been many instances in which “things just happen to get sprung on us” and lamented the “delay, delay, delay, referendum, lawsuit” that have set the project back again and again.