Orange City panel OKs change for large warehouse project

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Orange City panel OKs change for large warehouse project
BEACON PHOTO/AL EVERSON<br> HARD AT WORK — The Orange City Technical Review Committee hears an addition to the North Kentucky Distribution Center project in the old Southwest Activity Center area near the city's boundary.

A small group of Orange City officials wasted no time May 16 in approving an addition to a plan for a major warehouse and trucking complex near the intersection of North Kentucky Avenue and State Road 472.

The city’s Technical Review Committee approved a request from the developers to allow a truck-service center on the 44.54-acre site of the project, known for planning purposes as the North Kentucky Distribution Center. The project’s anchor structure is to be a warehouse enclosing 632,240 square feet — about 14.6 acres under roof — on the east side of Kentucky Avenue. The Orange City Council approved the North Kentucky Distribution Center last year, even though the end-user of the yet-to-be-built shipping and receiving center has not yet been disclosed.

When the actual site preparation and construction will begin is not known.

“We still have to get some approvals,” Brent Lenzen, an engineer with Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc., said.

Kimley-Horn is the applicant for the North Kentucky Distribution Center. The firm’s home offices are in Raleigh, North Carolina, and a branch office is in Orlando.

The developer is TDC Acquisitions LLC, of Atlanta.

Several local, state and federal regulatory agencies claim jurisdiction over the land and what is built upon it.

The truck-service center has been added to provide minor repairs and maintenance, as needed, for the tractor-trailers coming to and going from the warehouse. As well as changing oil, tires and batteries and performing such tasks as wheel alignments and brake repairs, the service facility will have fuel pumps for the semis.

“It’s an ancillary use. It’s for their fleet [of trucks]. It’s not open to the public,” Orange City Planner Danalee Petyk said.

The development agreement forbids such automotive uses as rebuilding engines and having a junkyard or salvage yard on the property.

Whatever is to be constructed on the site will draw intense truck traffic. The principal structure, according to planning reports, will have 139 dock doors on the loading and receiving platform. There will also be 82 tractor parking spaces, 154 tractor-trailer parking spaces, and 179 parking spaces for standard vehicles driven by the people working in the warehouse.

“The hours of operation may be up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” a planning report notes.

The project provides for a “future expansion area,” though no details are provided.

GRAPHIC COURTESY ORANGE CITY
BIG PLANS — The North Kentucky Distribution Center is a 44.54-acre project proposed near the site of the former Southwest Activity Center along the boundaries of DeLand, Deltona and Orange City. Land within Orange City is indicated in orange in the map at left, while Deltona is pink and DeLand is green. The white space is land within unincorporated Volusia County.

There will be two access points for the distribution center, and both of them will be along North Kentucky Avenue. There will be no access along State Road 472, even though many truck drivers will likely use the spacious highway to get to and from Interstate 4. Volusia County will probably begin work on widening Kentucky Avenue and removing “the vertical curve,” a rise in the terrain that obstructs drivers’ views of the traffic on Kentucky Avenue south of S.R. 472.

The change in the plan for the North Kentucky Distribution Center approved by the Technical Review Committee will be submitted to the Orange City Planning Commission June 7. From there, the revised development proposal will appear as an ordinance before the Orange City Council July 11. An ordinance must be approved on two readings on different dates. Each of the readings comes after a public hearing on the proposal.

The new round of attention to the North Kentucky Distribution Center follows the Volusia County Council’s recent adoption of an ordinance to allow warehouses and distribution centers in the unincorporated area of the now-defunct Southwest Activity Center. Approximately 480 acres remain under the county’s jurisdiction, bisected by S.R. 472.

While the property around the county’s chunk of the old development of regional impact — where development did not occur until after the DRI expired — has begun to attract new commercial and residential investment, the county’s piece has been largely untouched. The Integra Dunes apartments along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Beltway is an exception, and Pulte Homes is poised to build new homes on meadows on the north side of S.R. 472 between MLK Beltway and the T.G. Lee Dairy plant.

As the County Council was set to adopt the ordinance to amend the zoning for the county’s piece of the old SWAC, Alex Ford, whose family owns a great deal of the property, agreed to limit the development of warehouses to the south side of 472 to prevent the mixing of too much commuter traffic from neighborhoods with semi-truck traffic generated by distribution centers.

Ford declined to say if he or his family is marketing their property to companies looking to expand their distribution efforts or relocate from elsewhere.

Incidentally, the North Kentucky Distribution Center’s property was part of the SWAC and was within the county’s jurisdiction until Orange City annexed it several years ago.

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Born in Virginia, Al spent his youth in Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, and first moved to DeLand in 1969. He graduated from Stetson University in 1971, and returned to West Volusia in 1985. Al began working for The Beacon as a stringer in 1999, contributing articles on county and municipal government and, when he left his job as the one-man news department at Radio Station WXVQ, began working at The Beacon full time.

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1 COMMENT

  1. This blog sheds light on the positive impact of the approved change for the large warehouse project in Orange City. A significant step towards economic growth and job creation. Exciting news for the community!

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