Orange County NC Website
31 <br /> matter that there is a need. It may cry out <br /> - for an activity node, but, in the absence of <br /> an activity node, the way the County's zoning <br /> system is structured you can't have a <br /> commercial use there unless the commercial <br /> use is zoned EC-5. That's the only category <br /> of commercial zoning in Orange County scheme <br /> of things that can be located outside of an <br /> activity node. The EC-5 district was created <br /> in 1979 when the Zoning Ordinance was adopted <br /> to recognize certain commercial uses that <br /> were outside of activity nodes and to <br /> recognize them as being existing at the time <br /> the ordinance was adopted and to allow them <br /> to be in existence conforming which means <br /> that they could be expanded; the use could, <br /> you could add buildings, you could do <br /> whatever you wanted to do within the <br /> permitted use table within the existing <br /> commercial zone. <br /> Waddell asked you say expanded within - <br /> Gledhill responded within that zoning <br /> district. So if an EC-5 district were <br /> created, within that district and within the <br /> � _ . other constraints that the Zoning Ordinance <br /> has for all of its zoning districts you could <br /> j add buildings, you could add stories to <br /> buildings, you could change uses. You could <br /> have an automobile repair business today and <br /> you could have another one of the permitted <br /> uses in the permitted use table the next in <br /> that zoning district. This special <br /> designation was created so that these <br /> existing businesses, typically small <br /> convenience stores, mom and pop stores, small <br /> automobile repair businesses out in the <br /> county, out in the country could remain and <br /> not have to worry about battling constantly <br /> the non-conforming use problem which is that <br /> you can't expand and if you stop doing <br /> business for some reasonably short period of <br /> time, you can't come back and do business <br /> again; all those pitfalls that people are not <br /> aware of typically when non-conforming status <br /> wouldn't apply. Having said that, the <br /> genesis and the origin of this EC-5 district, <br /> let me say then that the only basis in the. <br /> County zoning scheme of things for this <br /> -" .. property to be zoned EC-5 is, if you find <br /> that if this use had been known by Orange <br /> County in 1981, it would have been at that <br /> time zoned EC-5. The second inquiry you have <br /> to make, assuming that you conclude that it <br />