The State College Zoning Hearing Board today panned a proposal for a new CVS drug store on South Atherton Street, arguing the development would sit too close to the adjacent Slab Cabin Run.
‘It’s our resource. We wrote the zoning to protect it,’ board member Rosalie Bloom-Brooks said of the waterway. She said CVS ‘could still have a pharmacy there,’ but only if the company would scale down its plans.
Pennsylvania CVS Pharmacy LLC, a branch of the national chain, is looking to build a new store at 1630 S. Atherton St., the site of a Ponderosa Steakhouse. Under tentative plans, the restaurant, built in 1977, would be torn down in 2012 to make way for the CVS.
But those plans can’t reach fruition unless the borough grants CVS an exemption from a zoning rule there. Since 1996, the borough has imposed an 85-foot natural buffer zone to help shield Slab Cabin Run from storm runoff and other water pollution in that area.
The Ponderosa is exempt from the riparian buffer-zone requirement because it predates the rule. But any new development is expected to follow the new standards, borough Zoning Officer Herman Slaybaugh said.
He recommended that the Zoning Hearing Board reject the CVS plan. The proposal would put some of the CVS development within 37 feet of the waterway. (The existing Ponderosa development now comes within 36 feet.)
‘The spirit of the ordinance is to protect the stream,’ Slaybaugh said. ‘ … There could be future redevelopment that would fully comply with the riparian zone. It’d just be smaller’ than what CVS has proposed.
CVS representatives, appearing at a board hearing on Tuesday, emphasized that the drug-store plan would reduce the overall amount of encroachment at the 3.1-acre property. Right now, some 4,274 square feet of the Ponderosa development sits within the riparian buffer zone; under the CVS plan, 3,721 square feet of development would be within the buffer zone.
The drug-store development also would include a stormwater-management system to help cleanse and cool stormwater before it’s discharged into Slab Cabin Run, said Matthew Allen, senior project manager with Maryland-based Bohler Engineering. No such system exists on the property right now.
‘We are reducing the encroachment (on the stream) by both distance and area from where it stands today,’ Allen said. Bohler handles engineering for CVS.
Allen said the proposed 13,225-square-foot building would include two drive-through lanes. It’s a standardized CVS design that’s specialized to keep the stores viable, competitive and precisely stocked with key merchandise, Allen said.
But Zoning Hearing Board members said they saw no reason to issue a zoning variance.
‘I don’t think we should be granting a variance for a private corporate policy,’ Bloom-Brooks said. Another board member, Lee Lowry, said he interpreted the proposal as ‘having totally ignored the riparian buffer.’
The third board member, Stan Lembeck, said he agreed that the proposal should be rejected.
Still, a formal decision by the board won’t be issued until June 8. CVS may appeal the decision in Centre County court, Slaybaugh said.
The land sought for redevelopment is owned by Nicholas, Heim and Kissinger Associates, and leased by the Ponderosa group. Allen said CVS would be next in line to lease the property if it can receive the necessary zoning approvals.
