The Orange City Council is now dealing with a question pitting economic development, with jobs and taxes, against protecting homeowners who invested in their community.
Etheridge Electric based in Shreveport wants to construct a multi-million dollar, 20,000 square foot building on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive at Tulane Road. The business fixes electrical motors and a branch in Orange would hire 25-30 workers to service the Gulf Coast area.
Local businessman and funeral home owner Woodrow Dorman III owns the land. According to the information from the city, nearly 27 acres along MLK are zoned commercial and Dorman is ready to sell to Etheridge.
But Dorman wants to add about 1.4 acres of land that is zoned for high-density residential to the sale. He is asking for the strip of land to be zoned commercial for Etheridge Electric.
However, two families who own garden homes Dorman sold them a decade ago said they were promised the strip of land behind them would remain commercial to separate them from the commercial land.
They also said Dorman promised a community of 18 garden homes, but only two were ever built.
“Two people are just as important as ten. Ten people are just as important as twenty, and so on,” said District 4 City Councilor Annette Pernell.
The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission earlier in the month recommended the zone change during a split vote. The Orange City Council spent nearly an hour and 45 minutes Tuesday evening hearing from all sides about the zone change. Council members asked a number of questions.
Pernell asked Etheridge Electric Chief Operating Officer Brad Bennett if he will consider developing the acreage without the strip of residential land and if a compromise could be made.
But City Attorney John Cash Smith said the council had to approve the zone change as listed on the agenda and not make a deal.
District 2 Councilor Brad Childs told Bennett “The city of Orange wants your business.”
Bennett said the company would like the extra land. He added that Dorman has been getting an agriculture exemption on the land for property tax reductions and the 1.4 acre would be too small to qualify for the exemption if Etheridge did not buy it.
Those opposing the zone change are garden home owners Gary and Joyce Seaton, and Cleve and Colleen Halliburton. Cleve Halliburton said his mother, Sue, who died earlier this year at the age of 83, bought the house after Hurricane Rita (2005) destroyed her other house. The Seatons also bought the house at the same time.
Halliburton and Seaton said Dorman had told them about the planned development of garden homes. They also saw construction pads for two additional houses and assumed they would be part of a community.
Also protesting are Theresa and Frank Beauchamp. Theresa recently won the Republican nomination to be the Precinct 2 Orange County Commissioner, a position her mother held 30 years ago. The Beauchamps live in a house Theresa’s parents built on Old Timers Road, across the narrow street from the garden homes.
Theresa Beauchamp said when the zoning for the land was designated after the city annexed it in the early 2000’s, they were promised the strip would be left residential as a buffer between the commercial land on MLK Drive.
Former Mayor Essie Bellfield was at Tuesday’s meeting and said she was on the council at the time and recalls the strip was to be kept residential.
Dorman during Tuesday’s public hearing said he had intended on building more garden homes, but the market declined. Plus, he found out that the city had subdivision regulations and he would have to install drainage with other amenities.
“My daddy told me never to call anybody a liar,” Beauchamp said. But Dorman “is not telling the truth.”
Dorman pointed out Beauchamp had campaigned for county commissioner by promoting economic development, but she doesn’t want it “in her back yard.”
Beauchamp said Dorman gave one map of the land to the Planning and Zoning Commission and another map to the City Council. “Waffling, waffling,” she said.
District 1 Councilor Pat Pullen and District 3 Councilor Terrie Turner said Dorman had taken them to look at the property and explain the development. Pullen asked about why the maps were different. Dorman replied that after the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, he decided he needed to make another map, adding trees and bushes.
Pullen represents the district in which the land is located. He said he is supports the new business, but also supports people. “It’s time for us to show citizens in Orange that we’re with them and we have their backs,” he said.
The council was ready to vote on the zone change of the strip for its first reading. Then City Manager Dr. Shawn Oubre said that a simple majority vote of the council would not make the zone change pass. He said city rules require a 3/4 majority of the council to pass a zone change if 20 percent of the nearby property owners oppose it.
Under that rule, a 4-3 council vote in favor of the zone change would mean it failed. A failing vote for a zone change means the landowner must wait a year before proposing the zone change again.
Oubre pulled aside Planning Director Kelvin Knauf. The two, along with City Attorney John Cash Smith, went into a hallway to a bathroom and held an impromptu meeting for about 10 minutes.
When they came back, Knauf apologized to the council and said he had not notified all the property owners on MLK Drive and Tulane Road who are within 200 feet of the proposed zone change.
The council then tabled the zoning ordinance until more property owners are notified.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
Good luck