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There’s nowhere to shop on Huntsville’s Green Mountain — and most residents want to keep it that way
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HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – There has never been anywhere to shop or buy a hot meal on Huntsville’s Green Mountain — and most residents seem content to keep it that way.
About 70 percent of Green Mountain’s adult population – nearly 300 people — have signed a petition against a proposed retail development on the mountain’s main drag, South Shawdee Road.
The concerns run the gamut: noise; storm runoff; delivery trucks and inexperienced teenage drivers sharing curvy, two-lane Green Mountain Road; large buildings sitting unused if the venture fails.
“We don’t want commercial, we don’t need commercial,” Green Mountain Civic League President Mark Prill told AL.com Wednesday. “And we absolutely don’t want to be saddled with the same empty storefront issues being dealt with in the valley.”
Despite mountain residents’ opposition, Huntsville Planning Commission members voted Aug. 26 for a zoning change that would let developer Mike Friday build a small retail center on five acres across from his Inspiration on Green Mountain subdivision. Friday is the owner of Woodland Homes.
The rezoning won’t happen unless it is also OK’d by the City Council, which is expected to hold an Oct. 23 public hearing on the idea.
The retail project at the corner of South Shawdee Road and South Village Square could include a small grocery store, ice cream shop and dry cleaner, along with a restaurant run by Friday’s wife, Melissa. She hosts a Sunday morning cooking show on WAAY TV Channel 31 and also has a food blog, “Dream Home Cooking Girl.”
“What we both envision is something very quaint and appropriate for Green Mountain – a boutique-type center that is aesthetically pleasing to the eye with appropriate architectural style,” Melissa Friday said at last month’s Planning Commission meeting.
The Fridays are moving to Green Mountain and said they want to create something that will enhance the area. Residents now have to drive down the mountain for a loaf of bread or gallon of milk.
Prill said the corner of South Shawdee Road and South Village Square was zoned by the city for commercial use in 1974 – long before Publix, Star Super Market, Target and dozens more retail stores opened in nearby Jones Valley. Mike Friday is asking for a less restrictive category of commercial zoning that would allow him to build within 30 feet of the street.
Most residents want Green Mountain to remain a “peaceful, tranquil retreat” from the buzz of the Rocket City below, said Prill. He fears that even a small commercial development will forever alter the mountain.
“Development is inevitable,” said Prill, “but we want to guide it and maintain the rural nature to the extent that we can.”
Resident Lara Person said any retail venture on the mountain is doomed to fail. People in the valley won’t drive up steep, two-lane Green Mountain Road to shop when they have so many options closer to home, she said, and many mountain residents will stay away because of their opposition to Friday.
“He has ticked off practically everybody on the mountain,” Person told AL.com this week. “This isn’t Hampton Cove or Madison. We’re different. We want to live a quiet life up on the mountain.”
Friday’s proposal would actually shrink the commercial footprint at the South Shawdee-South Village Square intersection from 5.65 acres to about 4.4 acres. And he has offered to change the zoning on other property he owns nearby from multi-family to single-family residential, erasing the possibility of apartments.
Green Mountain Civic League members “keep on asking me to make concessions,” Friday said at the Planning Commission meeting. “I feel like reducing the (commercial) property and eliminating all the multi-family is a huge concession.”
Prill said Friday met with civic league members last spring and offered to sell them the land for $250,000.
Not everyone on the mountain is anti-retail. Ken Arrington was one of several current or soon-to-be residents of Friday’s Inspiration on Green Mountain subdivision who spoke in favor of the project at the planning board meeting.
“On a Saturday morning when I forgot the biscuits and bacon, I don’t really want to have to drive down the mountain,” said Arrington. “I’m going to go there. It’s convenient.”