If Goodwill wants to build a distribution center and outlet store on Emerson Avenue, the company is going to have to make the building look like a shopping center.
That could include requiring Goodwill to use high-quality building materials, put in additional windows, install awnings and use earth-tone colors on the building, instead of the company’s typical blue.
Greenwood City Council members also want to limit the number of truck docks on the building and ban the company from storing semitrailers on the lot.
Those are all ideas the city intends to pitch during a meeting with Goodwill on Thursday. The ideas were brainstormed Monday by a three-member council committee of Mike Campbell, Linda Gibson and Brent Corey. The committee was meeting to discuss possible zoning changes in the Emerson Avenue area, where Goodwill wants to build.
Goodwill is seeking to build a 125,000-square-foot building off Emerson Avenue in the Greenwood Springs industrial park just south of Walmart. Most of the building would be a warehouse, but about 20,000 square feet would be an outlet store where shoppers can buy items by the pound.
City council members have questioned whether warehouses are appropriate on Emerson Avenue, as well as the quality of goods offered at Goodwill’s outlet shops.
The council voted down a zoning change that would have allowed the building on the 27-acre property, but Goodwill now is trying to get a variance to allow the proposed facility on a section of land that’s zoned for industrial use, where distribution centers are allowed.
The city’s board of zoning appeals also could reject that request, but city council members will try to negotiate with Goodwill to work out details about how the building would look if it were approved.
City officials want to try to get Goodwill to agree to add more decorative features to the building that would not normally be required of an industrial building in order for the outlet shop to mesh with existing businesses in the Greenwood Springs park. The company has seemed willing to do additional beautification if allowed to build the center, Greenwood planning director Bill Peeples said.
