A plan to bring a gas station and carwash to the Waverly Woods Village Center in western Howard County died Wednesday when the county Zoning Board unanimously voted against a zoning change in the fifth hearing on the matter.
"I'm obviously very disappointed in the outcome of the case," Rick Levitan, co-owner of the petitioner, Convenience Retailing LLC, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. "I'm shocked that this Zoning Board showed no regard for the recommendations of its own Department of Planning and Zoning (DPZ), which in 1999 and in 2007 issued staff reports which stated that the right place for a service station was in the Village Center."
Levitan, who has worked on the project for about two years, said he does not plan to pursue rezoning for the parcel located at Warwick and Birmingham ways, but had not given up entirely on the service station idea.
"We like the area," he said yesterday in a phone interview. "The area needs a gas station. We'll continue to look for other opportunities."
Ronald L. Spahn, an attorney representing the original developers of the shopping center, had argued that there never was a plan to put a gas station in the village center.
"We developed it in a manner the community loves, and we want to keep it that way," he said in an interview. "If we put one in, we want to put it on Marriottsville Road. People like their privacy. People don't like traffic."
Existing zoning allows a traditional restaurant on the site where Convenience Retailing had proposed the service station that was to have included a small snack shop. Construction of a fast-food restaurant at that location would require a conditional-use permit, according to county zoning officials.
At issue in Wednesday's hearing was whether there was evidence of a mistake in zoning or a change in the character of the community since the last rezoning.
"The need for the gas station was well-documented from all sides and it was a mistake of the Zoning Board during the Comprehensive Plan of 2004 not to change the zoning," Levitan, whose company has gas stations in Dorsey's Search and Owen Brown villages in Columbia, said in a statement. "The members of this Zoning Board should have rectified that mistake, but they chose not to."
Spahn had argued that there had been no change or mistake.
