Court vibe: Dollar General to get favorable ruling

As early as this afternoon or no later than tomorrow morning, a judge says he will issue his ruling on the challenge to an Oconee board of zoning appeals’ decision in favor of Dollar General.  At the circuit level this morning attorney Larry Brandt, on behalf of dissatisfied home owners, made a last ditch attempt to reverse the approval of a special zoning exception to allow retailer Dollar General to build a 9,100 foot store on the Ebenezer Road near the 4-way stop intersection with SC 188, the Keowee School Road.  Court observers agreed that Judge Lawton McIntosh appears to be leaning in favor of the county board of zoning appeals.  And McIntosh so indicated in remarks this morning directed to Brandt, explaining that, as a judge, he’s limited in his review of the appeal.  The legal words “arbitrary and capricious” were used by Brandt to characterize how he viewed the board’s decision last April to grant the special exception, considering that only five months earlier the same board said no when Dollar General proposed to build a store across Ebenezer Road closer to the 188 intersection.  Brandt specifically called into question the impact that Dollar General would have on traffic and the water quality inside a traditional rural zoning district complemented by a lake overlay.  But his legal counterpart, Doug Gray, argued that the board of appeals, as earlier requested by the judge, had satisfactorily explained the criteria used to grant the special exception.  Gray also said a traffic study demonstrated that additional traffic won’t be an issue, though Brandt said the two-lane road is not used to the kind of 18-wheelers that will deliver merchandise to the store.