CONWAY, S.C. (WBTW)- Concerned residents who live on Wild Wing Boulevard have started a petition against the City of Conway Zoning Department over the traffic plans for a new ALDI.
Residents say they were notified the entrance and exit for the store would be off Highway 501 and Wild Wing Boulevard. Residents say they did not get notice about public input and have concerns about the increased traffic.
“Once you add the ALDI and you’ve got to assume after that, there’s going to be additional development along there. What that’s going to do is create a huge bottleneck and a safety problem so this is the time to not build it and find a different solution,” Resident Barry Dykes said.
That’s the reason they’ve started a petition and plan to hold a community meeting about the matter Saturday afternoon.
Conway Planning Director Adam Emrick says the city worked to create a plan that would not bring more traffic onto an already busy and at times dangerous Highway 501.
Amrick says utilizing Wild Wing Boulevard would be a safer option and a study done by SCDOT in 2007-2008 confirms that. In addition, Amrick says the plans for that area were to always be for commercial uses so the study accounted for that growth.
However, Dykes tells News13 the are has grown at a faster rate than SCDOT anticipated so it’s outdated and a new study should be done. Dykes says if the planning committee doesn’t listen to their appeals, they will be forced to take action.
“Well, I would be very disappointed if that happened, we have basically two alternatives. One is legal action which we have considered and may in fact act on. The other is political action.”
The community meeting will happen at the HTC Community Room-Towne Center at Carolina Forest Saturday from 1:00-3:00pm.
The next City of Conway Planning and Zoning meeting is September 15th and the new ALDI location is on the agenda.
