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After years of apparently failing to comply with the requirements of its original zoning, The Home Depot at 5801 W. Loop 289 was granted a zoning change during a Lubbock City Council meeting Tuesday, removing restrictions the store has been violating on the display of outdoor items.
On the recommendation of city staff and the Planning and Zoning Commission, the council approved the store’s request to move to C-4 commercial district zoning with no specific use restrictions. The plat was originally zoned C-4 with a specific use for a home improvement store with an enclosed garden center.
The previous specific use restrictions limited how the store could use its outdoor space. It stipulated that portable buildings, plants and yard equipment could be displayed outside, but only up to the front of the sidewalk and not in the parking lot, according to the city’s planning director Kristen Sager. In addition, the store could not stack products above the chain-link fence surrounding the garden center and was required to have 150 available parking spaces.
The previous zoning was granted in 1996 when the store was built. Under the new zoning, only the parking space requirement remains. The store will be allowed to stack products anywhere in the parking lot as long as it maintains 150 available parking spaces.
Councilwoman Latrelle Joy said the store had been operating in violation of its previous zoning for years, which store manager Lisa Boyd confirmed, with rental trucks, trailers, portable buildings and mulch products in the parking lot past the front of the store’s sidewalk.
The store was notified of its violations by a city code enforcement officer in April and did not correct the violations within the required 10 days, Joy said. They were cited for the violations on May 12. Boyd’s application for a zoning change is dated May 23.
Sager said Lubbock’s Lowe’s Home Improvement and The Home Depot on 50th Street are both also zoned with specific use restrictions, but she added that if any of the three stores were built today, they would be zoned without the restrictions.
A motion to pass the new zoning passed 6-1. Councilwoman Latrelle Joy dissented.
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