The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
A 212,500-square-foot warehouse targeted for the corner of Davidson Avenue and Executive Drive was approved July 10 by the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
The 45-foot-tall warehouse, proposed by IDI Logistics of Atlanta, Ga., will replace three vacant office buildings on the 18-acre site.
The project needed a use variance because warehouses are not allowed in the BI Zone, in which the property is located.
The project also calls for vacating Executive Drive and turning it into a driveway for the warehouse. That would have to be done by the Township Council.
The warehouse will be built “on spec” since there is no tenant secured, said Justin Burns, IDI’s Northeast Market Officer. He said that one tenant is expected, but the warehouse has been designed to accommodate two.
“This really fits within the neighborhood, in our opinion,” he said. “It’s surrounded by other commercial properties and it is not proximate to any residential, which again is a key component for warehouse development for us. The third factor would also be the proximity to I-287, a major interstate highway system, which effectively gives almost uninterrupted access for both cars and trucks from the highway to the proposed warehouse.”
The building will be solar ready and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified, Burns said.
“We take sustainability and building in an environmentally conscious way very seriously,” he said.
The Township is currently undergoing a Master Plan review, a large part of which concerns where warehouses can be located, and how large they can be. Those regulations are not yet in place, but Alex Lomei, the project’s engineer, said the project will fall within the guidelines of a medium intensity use when they are instituted.
Township ordinance requires at least 93 parking spaces – to be increased to 119 spaces under the new Master Plan regulations – and the project will provide 152 spaces, Lomei said.
The building will have 22 trailer parking spaces and 39 loading docks on the side of the building that will face Executive Drive, he said.
One monument sign would be installed near the front corner of Executive Drive, and two wall signs will be placed on the building, Lomei said.
For landscaping, there will be a combination of shade, ornamental and evergreen trees, and deciduous and evergreen shrubs throughout the entire site, he said. “Again, we’re trying to maintain as much of the existing landscaping as possible around the site.”
The developer will replace 441 trees on the site, Lomei said.
Trees planted on a 4-to5-foot-high berm around the property will help to screen the building from drivers on Davidson, he said.
Elizabeth Dolan, the project’s traffic engineer, told the Board that based on the size of the building, she estimates about 60 trucks would enter the property during a typical day.
Dolan said that a proposed warehouse near this property – on the current site of the Ukrainian Cultural Center – would not negatively affect traffic in the area.
“The overall projections with both warehouses is still lower than the volumes that we recorded in 2014 when the office activity was being generated,” she said.
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