LEWES, Del.- The Sussex County Council on Tuesday morning approved the Gills Neck Road Village Center, a controversial shopping center at the intersection of Kings Highway and Gills Neck Road in Lewes.
During its meeting, the council voted in favor of the re-zoning application for the center to become a B-1, which means a neighborhood business district.
The project has been reduced in size roughly 85 percent since 2008. Now that it has been approved, the center could be up to 75,000-square-feet in size.
The Sussex County Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously voted to recommend this current application to the council, despite the opposition of some neighbors who said it would hurt the environment and affect traffic.
"It's a public health factor, public safety, welfare," Nadine Wick said Monday."It encompasses all that."
Wick said she is concerned that the most recent traffic study on the area was done in 2006.
Nick Hammonds, who works for Jack Lingo Asset Manaement who is managing the project, said the most recent application was the result of a number of compromises.
"Our interests are pretty much aligned in that we're developing multiple properties on Gills Neck Road," he says. "So free flow of traffic is important to everyone."
Hammonds said traffic improvements would be made as the project moves forward. He also mentioned the project's economic impact.
"There are a number of economic benefits. You have one-time jobs that are created during construction and you have ongoing jobs," he said. "With a retail center, you're going to have permanent job creation as well."
For more history on the project, read WBOC's article from July 2016.
