Grace Baptist Church in Evans is set to provide tournament space for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
On March 8, the Columbia County Planning Department sent a letter to the church and tournament director Josh Brewster approving their request for a temporary use authorization at the church’s property at 4945 Hardy McManus Road.
The application, submitted on Feb. 24, includes a plan to set up one 4 by 20 foot tent, one 32 by 10 foot office trailer and one 20 by 10 foot Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant restroom trailer on the church property, along with a shuttle staging zone and overflow parking.
The petition is one of six such temporary use requests Augusta National has submitted for the ANWA tournament, most of them in or around the Champions Retreat Golf Club Property, where the tournament will be held starting March 29.
The request is approved, and is on the agenda for the Planning Commission’s Thursday to be presented as information only.
Pollard Camper Rental has submitted a rezoning request from Agricultural to Special for its roughly two-acre property at 3265 Jacqueline Drive in Evans.
The recreational vehicle rental business, which has been in operation since 2007, and has owned the property since 2016, uses it as a lay down storage yard for its 18 rental campers, as well as two delivery trucks and maintenance equipment. Save for a wooden fence along the road frontage, there are no plans to develop the mostly unoccupied, wooded parcel, according to the narrative document.
Planning staff is recommending approval of the request, citing the applicants’ own statement that the site wouldn’t be suitable for a residence, having reviewed findings of a soil survey on the property.
“While the report doesn’t outright say that development isn’t possible, the site isn’t suitable for a standard system,” staffing states, noting the soil survey report’s states high probability of failure. “The site’s highest and best use may not be residential due to the soils and a use like this that doesn’t require anyone living on the site may be the better option.”
Raymerica LLC is looking to build a Ray Rays Car Wash between Riverwatch Parkway and Rountree Way. The Evans-based company is requesting to rezone six parcels totaling about three acres along both roads from R-2 Single-family Residential to C-2 General Commercial, in order to construct an expressway car wash where customers stay inside while going through the wash tunnel.
Another Ray Rays Car Wash is currently under construction at the Costco Shopping Center on Cabela Drive, scheduled to open in May.
Gary Simpson, who, with Raymond Carnes comprises the Raymerica partnership, cites in the narrative a traffic study done for Lidl that over 2,300 trips per day are made along Roundtree Way.
“There are no comparable trip generations for a full service car wash in the [Institute of Transport Engineers] book,” said Simpson.
The staff report for the proposed car wash recommends disapproval of the request, citing the intended use leans more industrial than would be fitting for the area.
“In staff’s opinion the intent is to have these uses on the periphery of the character area (where the industrial development is already located generally) and not at the nearly geographic center,” said the report. “Staff does acknowledge that there are existing carwashes within this Character Area, but they have been in existence prior to the adoption of this Future Development Map.”
All three items are on the agenda for the Columbia County Planning Commission’s meeting on Thursday, March 16 at 6 p.m.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
