Some good business news emerged at the monthly meetings of Henderson’s planning and zoning commissions this week.
Despite all of the recent concern about auto repair shops and zoning regulations, C&P Body Shop is thriving, owner Jerry Patterson told the Zoning Board of Adjustment on Tuesday afternoon
“Business has been real good,” Patterson said about his repair shop at 3261 Raleigh Road, in the city’s Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction.
The growth has the company bursting at the seams, so it’s expanding across the street with a 12,600-square-foot building at 3268 Raleigh Road.
Patterson said the new site will hold C&P’s offices, estimate area and painting operations, and customers will drop off and pick up their cars on that side of Raleigh Road. Employees will be responsible for getting the vehicles back and forth across the road.
Dozens of facilities that repair, tow or store cars in the city and the ETJ are threatened with making expensive improvements, if not moving, under a proposed amortization ordinance to bring such businesses into full compliance with Henderson’s zoning ordinance, but Patterson said the zoning requirements aren’t a problem for C&P.
C&P does not store any vehicles it is not working on, so the junk cars that have been a source of aggravation at some sites are not an issue, Patterson said. The only exceptions are vehicles that insurance companies decide are totaled, and those wrecks are gone within five days.
Patterson also said all of the vehicles are stored inside locked buildings at night.
The Zoning Board of Adjustment unanimously approved C&P’s special-use permit to erect the building in the I-2 (industrial) zone.
The board also unanimously granted a variance for C&P to place a ground-level sign that’s up to 250 square feet outside the facility at 3268 Raleigh Road.
Patterson hasn’t decided what kind of sign he wants but said he should pick one within two weeks. The sign shouldn’t be bigger than 250 square feet, but if it winds up being a different design from the proposal he showed the board — perhaps being elevated, for instance — he’ll have to return for another zoning variance.
Board member Sam Pearson asked whether Patterson was adding jobs with the new building. Patterson said he’ll add employees as business warrants such hiring.
“I’m building for Henderson to grow, and I want to be ready for that growth,” Patterson said.
Another business building to accommodate its success is Solare, which is in the ETJ on Parham Spring Lane, off Parham Road.
Solare owner Bob Esquivel appeared before the Planning Board on Monday afternoon with a rezoning request for his business site.
Solare manufactures specialized laboratory equipment from high-tech plastics. It has several patented processes, Esquivel said, and it uses no chemicals, only craftsmanship. He said the business has no waste because the scrap plastic is sold back to manufacturers to be reground and used again.
The business incorporated in 1994 with Esquivel and his wife, JoAnn, as the only employees. It now has about 20 workers at any time, Esquivel said.
“We’re at the point now where we need to grow,” he said. “We’re dictated by our customers.”
Esquivel and his father moved to that area of Parham Road about 20 years ago. His father has about a 1-acre home site, and Esquivel lives on about 4 acres. Because they live just across a 0.75-acre pond from the manufacturing business, he said, the Esquivels are sensitive to neighbors’ concerns about the plant’s operations. For example, the trucks that transport Solare’s products come only in the middle of the day, and the company made a wide apron to ensure the trucks stay on pavement when they turn into and out of the property off Parham Road.
After adding a 2,000-square-foot addition five or six years ago, Solare tried to limit its growth, Esquivel said. But he has seen business expand 18 percent to 22 percent per year, and he expects that pace to continue for the next five years.
“We have done everything we could do to restrain growth to some degree because we knew we were in a residential area,” Esquivel said.
To accommodate that growth, Solare needs 1,200 square feet of new warehouse space. There’s no other cost-effective option, Esquivel said.
Solare is in an R-15M zone, which is a low-to-moderate-density residential area allowing mobile homes, and the company can’t build the addition in that district. Esquivel’s request was to change his land to I-2. To ease that transition, Esquivel combined some neighboring lots to produce a 6.29-acre tract that’s separate from the family’s residential lots.
Mark Sanders, Esquivel’s neighbor at 506 Parham Road for about six years, was the only other person to address the board during the public hearing Monday, and he fully endorsed the rezoning.
“You couldn’t ask for a better corporate citizen,” Sanders said. “You couldn’t ask for a better neighbor.”
On a motion for Delores Ayscue seconded by Cornell Manning, the Planning Board unanimously backed the rezoning request, sending it to the City Council for final approval.
“We appreciate your development of this property,” board Chairman Gray Faulkner said. “It sounds like you’re doing a good job for the neighborhood.”