The Hocker family will have to wait at least another few weeks to know whether or not they will get the go-ahead for two new billboards proposed for their property at the intersection of Routes 17 and 26. The Sussex County Board of Adjustments at their Oct. 15 meeting tabled a decision on a request by Gerald Hocker, as presented by Gerry Hocker, to permit the two billboards, at a height of 38 feet, with additional signs.
The Hocker family owns 20 acres of commercially zoned property at the intersection of the two roads, including what houses the Hockers’ Supercenter. Some 75 percent of the property is not currently being used for commercial uses, however, and the combined six parcels contain 1,240 of frontage on Route 26.
The family hopes to make use of some of that frontage with two new double-decker billboards, identical in design, and would need the county Board of Adjustments to grant a variance to allow the billboards to be built at the requested 38-foot height — 25 feet is the allowed maximum for a billboard — and to contain four signs each (two on each side of each billboard, for eight total).
Gerry Hocker said Monday that plans were to keep the billboards the required 300 feet apart, at minimum, and to put one of them at the far eastern side of the property, away from the corner and entrance to the Supercenter. He also confirmed that plans would put the signs outside the 25-foot front setback and 50-foot side setback.
Hocker said the 13 feet of addition height was needed to allow for 12 feet of clearance from the pole structure at the bottom of the signs, two 10-foot-tall signs stacked one above the other and 4 feet of division between the signs. The 12 foot clearance height, he said, would allow clearance in case stormwater management elements or parking needed to be added below the billboards in the future.
“I strongly feel that none of the adjacent property owners would be affected,” Hocker said of the billboards, pointing to sparse nearby residential use, with vacant and dilapidated homes being the nearest neighbors.
Questioned by board members about plans for use of the signs on the billboards, Hocker said one of the billboards would have advertising for the Supercenter on one of the western-facing signs, while one on the eastern-facing side would advertise the family’s G&E store on Cedar Neck Road.
Board members said that might pose problems with the county’s limitations on off-premise signs — something the county planning and zoning department will have to look into if the billboards are built and used as Hocker plans.
Gerry Hocker questioned whether such a limitation would still come into play if the stores were to lease the signs through the family’s corporation instead of directly advertising on signage it owns, but again the planning and zoning department was said to be the arbiter of such things.
While many of the billboards in that area are single-deck billboards, county staff said some in the area are double-deckers and have similar height to the one being proposed by the Hockers.
With no objections to and no support for the plan from others in the audience at the Oct. 15 hearing, board members said they would like to take another look at the area and the proposal and tabled a decision until their Nov. 5 meeting.
Dagsboro American Legion gets approval
The Dagsboro American Legion did get the answer from the board that it was looking for on Oct. 15. The group had requested a variance from minimum parking space and paving requirements at their location north of Route 26 and west of Route 113, after previous permission from June of 2005 had expired.
Engineer Christian Barry said there had been many delays with the project in the last two years, with needed permits just finally coming into the group’s hands after they needed to seek a federal permit for wetlands impacts due to minor impacts on a drainage ditch on the property. With that permit due to expire in March of 2008, he said the group is now anxious to get construction started.
The request to have reduced parking and a reduced amount of paving comes as a result of a change in plans for the project’s septic service. Originally planned for a sand-mound septic system, the Dagsboro American Legion has since been told that county sewer is planned to serve that area within five years and that a holding tank can be used until then.
With the sewer service now anticipated, the group said they would prefer to leave the eastern area planned for a sewer connection unpaved in the meantime, thus necessarily reducing the available parking.
Barry said they could add some additional parking because the sand mound is gone, but the building is also now planned to be smaller, due to funding issues.
County staff said the expiration of the permissions for the project was recognized as not suggesting they “have been sitting around doing nothing,” but that they were indeed aware of the delays involved with a project of this size.
With the requested variance no longer necessary after the sewer is connected, pending a concept approval for the holding tank from county, and no opposition from those in attendance, board members voted unanimously on Oct. 15 to approve the change in the paving and parking plan, until completion of the county sewer, at which point the area will revert to parking spaces.