A divided Denton City Council on Tues­day rejected a drive-through lane in the proposed Fry Street Village — a move that could derail plans for the controversial development.

The drive-through was to serve CVS Pharmacy, the anchor tenant of the proposed 55,000-square-foot Fry Street Village, which would replace businesses razed this summer at Hickory and Fry streets with new retail shops and restaurants.

The property’s zoning allows a drive-through only if the council approves a special-use permit. A motion to approve the permit failed on a 3-4 vote after two and a half hours of public input and council discussion.

The vote capped a year and a half of heated public debate over the redevelopment of an area that has long been an off-campus hangout for University of North Texas students.

Supporters of the drive-through, including UNT officials, said it would enable long-overdue improvements to the area and boost the tax base. Opponents, including some residents of the nearby Oak-Hickory Historic District, said the drive-through would increase traffic, pollute air and endanger pedestrians in the heavily walked area.

“I am a thousand percent for sustainable, quality development,” said Mayor Pro Tem Pete Kamp, who voted against the drive-through over safety and pollution concerns. “I just believe that this drive-through is inappropriate in this area.”

Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Joe Mulroy and council members Jack Thomson and Chris Watts voted with Kamp. Mayor Perry McNeill and council members Charlye Heggins and Bob Montgomery voted for the drive-through.

McNeill said the developer’s plans met the city’s criteria for approval.

“The facts support allowing them to have an SUP [special-use permit],” McNeill said.

It was not immediately clear how the vote would affect United Equities Inc.’s plans for Fry Street Village.

When asked what would happen with the project as he immediately left the council chambers following the council’s vote, United Equities president Buster Freedman said, “I don’t know.”

United Equities project manager Tim Sandifer had repeatedly said CVS would not locate there without a drive-through, and that the entire redevelopment project would fall apart without the anchor tenant.

Former council member Mike Cochran, a vocal opponent of the drive-through, praised the council’s decision.

“They just looked at the facts and saw it the same way we did,” said Cochran, referring to what opponents called an unworkable site plan. “And they didn’t get intimidated by threats and scare tactics.”

Residents filled City Hall to speak out on one of the city’s most contentious issues in years. Many gave opposing opinions during a public hearing.

Jean Schaake, who recently finished a lengthy service as a member of the Denton school board, cited a nearby Jack in the Box drive-through a block away from the area surrounded by Fry, Oak, Welch and Hickory streets as an example of a drive-through co-existing with pedestrian and auto traffic.

Charles Stafford, current board president, said he too was concerned about pedestrian traffic initially, but realized that a number of businesses in town support drive-throughs and “the newspaper is not filled with accounts of vehicular-pedestrian accidents.”

A longtime Denton property owner, Stafford said the image of Fry Street as eclectic, quirky and artsy overlooks its reality as an area of “drug abuse, vandalism and sexual exploitation.”

“The use of this as a wedge issue to be driven between neighborhoods and developers is wrong,” Stafford said, referring to the divisiveness that has resulted since the property was first bought by the Houston-area developer in the early summer of 2006.

Both Schaake and Stafford, saying they were speaking on their own behalves, said they favored passage of the special-use permit.

 “I ask that you put aside emotion, rhetoric and politics on the CVS request for the drive-through as you consider three concerns: safety, pollution and appropriate rebuild of the Fry Street area,” Schaake said.

Donna Morris, who owns a local bed and breakfast with her husband, spoke against allowing the special-use permit, though she said she is not anti-growth.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you can’t live in Denton, keep your sanity and be anti-growth,” she said. “I drive down University Drive every week and say, ‘Please get that Sam’s [Club] built.’”

Though a strong proponent of the light rail and a longtime business owner, Morris said the safety concerns had not been adequately addressed.

“What United Equities is planning doesn’t fit where they want to put it,” she said.

Sitting back down among more than 100 people in the packed council chambers, Morris shook with pain from an arm hurt in a fall just before arriving at City Hall.

“I’m probably going to the emergency room after this,” she said. “But I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

Council members each made statements before casting their votes. Mulroy and Watts both expressed concern that the developer had not organized a neighborhood meeting with city staff present to go over opponents’ concerns.

Mulroy said the site plan “barely achieved” the space required for a drive-through stacking lane and lacked a pedestrian walkway from the main parking lot behind the proposed CVS to the store entrances.

He also queried staff and engineers about traffic studies of the property as several residents questioned the veracity of the developer’s numbers, which showed limited impact. The numbers were derived from doing a traffic count in July after the Fry Street buildings were burned in an arson fire. Realizing students were out of school, numbers from a 1999 traffic study were used in calculating a 40 percent increase to the numbers from the July study.

United Equities bought most of the block bordered by Fry, Oak, Welch and Hickory streets last year and announced plans to redevelop it. The news spurred protests from residents who wanted to save existing businesses and buildings, some dating to the 1920s. The developer demolished five of the buildings but pledged to replace them with structures that integrate 1920s-style architecture.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com .

Denton City Council members voted Tuesday on whether to allow a special-use permit for a drive-through lane in the proposed Fry Street Village development. Here’s how they voted on the motion, which failed 4-3.

FOR

Perry McNeill, mayor

Charlye Heggins, District 1

Bob Montgomery,

at large

AGAINST

Pete Kamp, mayor pro tem,
District 2

Joe Mulroy, deputy mayor pro tem, at large

Chris Watts, District 4

Jack Thomson, District 3

“People like Tim [Sandifer] and Buster [Freedman] don’t come along every day.”

—Paul Mayer with Garland Economic Development Partnership, who worked with United Equities on a project in that city

“Here is a developer who wants to come in and work in an area that has been ignored and underused for years and they ask nothing from the city. The entire project is paid for by private investment.”

—Julias Bershell, Denton lawyer

“This project will clearly help the university and we ignore that at our peril.”

—Charles Stafford, Denton
school board president

*

“The former council members of Denton that have established the Fry Street Small Area Plan did so with the best interest of the community in mind. They knew, as you also know, how important Fry Street is to this city in order to keep Denton ‘North of Ordinary’.”

—Kati Trice, who has protested changes along Fry Street

“I’m a full-time UNT employee, so as a member of ‘campus corner,’ I’m anxious to try out new stores and restaurants. However, I would rather look at that empty lot than endanger the character of the neighborhood or the public safety in the Fry Street area.”

—Erin O’Toole, a University of
North Texas employee

“We did not ask Denton to change its regulations to meet our needs. We changed our plans to conform to the city’s plans.”

—Donna Morris, co-owner of a Denton bed and breakfast

Also Tuesday, the Denton City Council:

• Approved a no-parking zone for an accident-prone section of Scripture Street, north of the University of North Texas. Parking will be prohibited on the north side of Scripture between Bryan and Ponder streets. The manager of the City Parc at Fry Street apartments asked for the change to keep people from parking too close to the complex’s driveway, restricting motorists’ view.

• Approved, on second and final reading, the annexation of 1,018 acres of the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Area east of Denton. City leaders say the an­nex­ation would help the city better manage and preserve the area, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns. Some nearby property owners opposed the annexation, saying the city isn’t equipped to provide services to the land.

• Requested a state grant to help pay for an estimated $1.63 million in taxiway improvements at Denton Municipal Airport. The Texas Department of Transportation grant would help fund construction of a taxiway on the airport’s southeast side, opening the area to development, and the widening of an existing taxiway to accommodate larger aircraft. The city also agreed to fund 10 percent ($163,000) of the improvements.

• Agreed to allow people who live outside the city and teach at a public, private or parochial school to buy a full-access Denton Public Library card for $30 a year. The standard charge for nonresidents is $50 a year. School students who live outside Denton already were eligible for the discount.

• Awarded a contract of up to $1.05 million to Fort Worth-based Laughley Bridge and Construction Inc., which submitted the lowest of five bids for drainage improvements along the Morse Street channel in Southeast Denton. The city plans to widen, realign and concrete about 1,600 feet of unpaved drainage channel and replace culverts. The project is de­signed to prevent flooding on Morse between Baldwin and Newton, and stop erosion upstream.

• Approved a contract of up to $1.5 million with PGAL of Irving to design a police and fire training facility on Vintage Parkway off Interstate 35W in south Denton. The contract includes $81,350 to design to Leadership in Ener­gy and Environmental Design standards. The proposed training facility — delayed for years by a lack of funding — is now expected to cost $14 million.

Amended a tax abatement agreement with Winona, Minn.-based Fastenal Co., extending the company’s deadline to build a regional headquarters and distribution facility in Denton. Company officials, who said they couldn’t meet the original deadline of December 2006, now will have until Dec. 31, 2009, to build the facility. The original deadline was part of the five-year, 35 percent property tax abatement agreement that the council approved in 2004.

—Lowell Brown

If you missed Tuesday’s showdown over Fry Street Village, you can watch a replay of the Denton City Council meeting on government cable access network DTV (Channel 26 for Charter customers, 38 for Verizon customers):
* 9 a.m. Wednesday

* 6 p.m. Thursday  

* 1 p.m. Saturday

* 1 a.m. Monday