When the City Council meets on Sept. 14, for the first time in five months the agenda will not include the conditional-use permit request that has fueled contentious debate and reluctant negotiations. The week following the Aug. 10 City Council meeting, Stubbs signed a permit that limits him to operating a thrift store at 3150 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Any other use requires the council’s approval.
Since May, Stubbs had pursued a parallel conditional-use permit that would rezone his South Lumberton property from an automotive sales lot to a thrift store. The permit in its original form would allow Stubbs to operate a thrift store, or any business not expressly prohibited.
Planning Director Brandon Love said at the Planning Board meeting in July that the number of times the request has gone through the board and council “isn’t necessarily normal, but at the same time, the process is working. This is what’s supposed to happen; people are supposed to have their say, and hopefully this will come to a healthy compromise.”
Stubbs said during a phone call Thursday that he wanted to “leave it alone,” and refused to comment further.
During the exhaustive negotiation process, the thrift-store-only restriction seemed to be the one outcome Stubbs resolutely resisted. By the final Planning Board meeting, Stubbs had agreed to prohibit adult establishments, bars or nightclubs, billiard parlors, pool halls, and gaming centers, and any accessory use thereof.
“I want a thrift shop, but I don’t like the idea of being hog-tied,” Stubbs said at the City Council meeting in August.
But at that meeting, even the councilmen who previously supported Stubbs’ permit voted to block his attempt to open anything other than a thrift shop.
The council told Stubbs that he could either agree to the application for just a thrift store or his request would not be approved. Stubbs said he would not accept that condition, and the rezoning was denied in a unanimous vote.
At that meeting, Precinct 5 Councilman John Cantey said that “new evidence has come to light,” and twice mentioned that Stubbs may use the establishment as a recording studio or “things of that nature.”
Cantey has been the councilman most vehemently opposed to the permit.
The Planning Department first recommended Stubbs’ permit at a policy meeting in April, but City Council tabled the request. After that meeting, Stubbs added his wife Cleo to the application, and agreed to prohibit adult establishments, bars, and nightclubs from the premises.
By June’s policy meeting, Cantey asserted that “known drug dealers” had been seen washing their cars on the property, leading the council — with Cantey voting against the motion — to refer the matter back to the Planning Board for a public hearing.
At the July public hearing, Cantey presented a petition he said was signed by 150 constituents “from in and around the area” whom he said did not want Stubbs to have an open-ended permit. He said they worried that the business would encourage drug dealing and loitering. During the subsequent discussion, Precinct 8 representative Erich Hackney introduced the idea of a permit for a thrift store only.
A confusing series of motions — one to deny the permit and one to approve it with its prohibited establishments — that received contradictory votes split the council, which again sent the matter back to the Planning Board.
Stubbs brought to the Planning Board meeting in July a petition he said was signed by 200 Precinct 6 residents who supported the permit. Cantey dismissed Stubbs’ petition as irrelevant, and said he and his supporters would stop resisting the permit if in addition to other prohibited uses, Stubbs excluded accessory use of pool tables and video gaming. Stubbs agreed.
But at the City Council meeting following that agreement, the councilmen unexpectedly reverted back to the thrift-store-or-nothing deal. Stubbs would not comply with the stipulation at that meeting, but about a week later he signed the limited agreement.
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