MORGANTON, N.C.,None — Plans for a Walmart Supercenter shopping complex are moving forward as the developer has filed a brownfields agreement with the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources and opened public comments.
Morganton Retail Investment, LLC, filed the agreement pertaining to properties at 500 Hopewell Road and 400 Henredon Drive, the location of the vacant Henredon Furniture Plant.
WRS, Inc. manages Morganton Retail Investment. The public has 30 days from Friday to comment on the brownfields agreement.
The North Carolina Brownfields Program allows prospective developers of brownfield sites (where environmental contamination hinders redevelopment) to negotiate an agreement that would define activities needed to make the site suitable for reuse. This does not penalize the developer, who may not be responsible for contaminating a site, and does not require the developer to clean up the site to regulatory standards.
In the 1990s, Henredon identified petroleum and chlorinated solvent contamination, the brownfields agreement stated.
Henredon removed two underground petroleum storage tanks in 1993, leading to the identification of soil contamination and the removal of approximately 224 tons of that soil.
Reports filed to N.C. DENR in 1994 and 1995 indicate chlorinated solvent contamination in the groundwater. The contamination was associated with truck degreasing activities.
Henredon identified free product in a well installed in a former tank pit. The product was removed via hand-bailing and a passive skimmer between 1994 and 1997.
Henredon ceased manufacturing operations in 2007.
The brownfields agreement lists the work Morganton Retail Investment must complete to use the land. That includes retaining and maintaining each groundwater monitoring well, injection well, recovery well and piezometer on the property and any other man-made points of groundwater access.
Activities that encounter or expose groundwater – such as installing wells, fountains, ponds, swimming pools – on the property within 500 feet east of Henredon Brook can only occur after sampling and analysis of groundwater.
The property also cannot be used as an outdoor playground or for child care centers without N.C. DENR's prior written approval.
WRS Chief Operating Officer Steve Howell said the company has closed on the property at 500 Hopewell Road and hopes to close on the property at 400 Henredon Drive following the public comment period of the brownfields agreement.
"The city (of Morganton) has been ready to issue permits for quite some time," Lee Anderson, director of design and development, said.
WRS would begin moving dirt within two to three weeks of closing on the property, Howell said. If everything goes according to plan, the projected completion date is the first half of 2013.
Howell, at this time, declined to name additional prospective stores in the shopping center.
According to the brownfields agreement, both properties total 103.652 acres, and WRS hopes to redevelop the property into "a retail shopping center with several anchor tenants, small shop space and several out parcels."
Among the items Morganton Retail Investment lists as a benefit to the community in the agreement are the creation of approximately 250 construction jobs and 910 retail and commercial jobs, tax revenues for affected jurisdictions and a spurt to community redevelopment.
The full notice of intent to redevelop a brownfields property is available for review at the Morganton Public Library, 204 S. King St. or at the offices of the N.C. Brownfields Program, 401 Oberlin St., Suite 150, Raleigh by contacting Shirley Liggins, shirley.liggins@ncdenr.gov, or at 919-508-8411.
Public comments and public meeting requests should be addressed to Bruce Nicholson, Brownfields Program Manager, Division of Waste Management, N.C. Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources, 401 Oberlin Road, Suite 150, Raleigh, N.C. 27605.
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