Just under three years since the Statesboro Publix opened in Eagles Corner Shopping Center, a proposal is moving forward for another major supermarket chain, Kroger, to have a big store and a fueling center built less than two miles to the west around the bypass.

Southeastern Property Acquisitions LLC, based in Augusta, applied to Statesboro’s city Planning and Development Department to have 28 acres in two adjoining tracts with the addresses 6850 Cypress Lake Road and 7406 Veterans Memorial Parkway, at the intersection, rezoned from R-3 residential to MX “mixed use.” The Statesboro Planning Commission voted 7-0, after a Nov. 4 hearing, to recommend conditional approval of the zoning change. City Council will take up the question Tuesday, Nov. 18, during its 5:30 p.m. meeting.

The 99,992-square-foot Kroger supermarket — for comparison, the Publix store, not counting outbuildings, covers about 49,000 square feet and the Walmart Supercenter about 186,000 — would be the centerpiece of the proposed mixed commercial and residential project.

A revised but still preliminary site plan, obtained Monday from city Planning and Development Director Justin Williams, now shows four outparcels, each a little more or less than one acre. Two of those store lots, with the Kroger Fuel Center on a narrower strip between them, would be on the side facing Veterans Memorial Parkway, also known as the U.S. 301 Statesboro Bypass, while the other two outparcels would face Cypress Lake Road.

“There are outparcels. We’re not certain what they’re looking to put on said outparcels, but there are hopefully going to be some great things on that frontage,” Williams said.

An earlier version of the preliminary site plan, placed in agenda packets for last week’s Planning Commission meeting, showed a different arrangement, with just two outparcels for smaller stores and no sketch of the residential portion of the property. This latest concept plan was received by city officials on the day of the Planning Commission hearing, Williams said.

Five access points

As already indicated in the earlier concept sketch and the city staff’s report, the developers are proposing a total of five access points, one being a right-in/right-out-only opening from the westbound side of Veterans Memorial Parkway. Two of the access points on Cypress Lake Road would be open entrance-and-exit points, and one would be a right-in/right-out-only.

A fifth “proposed access point to the north on Cypress Lake Road has yet to be determined with the future residential development phase,” stated the city staff’s zoning services report on its site details page. At that time, the conceptual site sketch left a blank “future development” patch where the housing might go.

Housing sketch added

But the latest plan shows existing Whispering Pines Boulevard providing the entrance drive to a detailed sketch of a proposed residential area on the opposite side of the Kroger shopping center area from the Bypass. Still, this is “just a sketch,” Williams noted in reply to an emailed question about the proposed number of homes.

The sketch shows 60 home lots arranged around a loop drive encircling a “clubhouse, pool and playground area.” Another 15 lots sketched on the other side of Whispering Pines Boulevard may be outside the area of the requested zoning change but on land belonging to one of the same property owners.

With wetlands protection and stormwater control having been identified as concerns for this property, a large stormwater detention area is proposed for the corner of the commercial development at the Cypress Lake Road-Veterans Parkway intersection. A smaller water detention area is sketched for the back corner of the residential development and a still smaller one in the bend of Whispering Pines Boulevard.

Local attorney Stephen Rushing, who has been representing Southeastern Property Acquisitions, LLC, as the applicant, was not reached with a phone call Monday seeking information about the company. But the Georgia-registered limited-liability company of that name shares its Augusta business address with a real estate firm simply called Southeastern, whose project portfolio includes a number of current and former Kroger stores, among other commercial developments across the Southeast, and whose website “news” page also highlights a few residential projects.

City’s 3 conditions

The city planning staff recommended conditional approval with three conditions, all adopted by the Planning Commission in its unanimous recommendation:

1) The applicant, in other words Southeastern Property Acquisitions, LLC, must provide a wetland plan to ensure that “substantial issues” are mitigated before an LDAP, or land disturbing activity permit, is issued.

2) “The applicant must submit a traffic study in accordance with requested site development,” also before an LDAP is issued.

3) “To reduce the potential of negative environmental impacts, the property owner must utilize standards” from the Georgia Stormwater Management Manual for “stormwater detention, TSS (total suspended solids) removal, overbank protection and extreme flood protection in submitting engineering plans,” the city report stated.

Incidentally, the applicant is apparently not the property owner at this point. The land parcels are reportedly owned by 3 Eagles Solutions and John Altman. The Cypress Lake Road parcel includes a circa-1960 single-family house, which would be removed, and wooded acreage. The parcel with the Veterans Memorial Parkway address, which is a smaller part of the tract proposed for development, is mostly cleared land with a secondary structure recently used for a landscaping business.

Both parcels were annexed into the city in September 2024, according to the staff report.

Traffic and wetlands

In drafting conditions such as those for the rezoning of this property, city Planning and Development officials seek to address the most important concerns in the simplest way possible, according to Williams.

“We want it to be simple, we want it to cover the most relevant things, so if you look at the conditions we recommended as staff, we’re making them build to a higher standard than truly is required here in the city of Statesboro,” he said. “The Georgia Stormwater Management Manual is what we’re basing our requirement on, which is something you see in larger cities.”

Given some recent and recurring issues with stormwater, this is something Statesboro area residents are very concerned about, “and I completely understand that,” he said.

In regard to roads at this intersection and frontage, Veterans Memorial Parkway, as part of a state and federal highway, is subject to Georgia Department of Transportation approval for an access point. Cypress Lake Road remains a county road and so would be subject to county standards, but Whispering Pines is a city street, according to Williams.

In regard to wetlands, “I want to make it clear that although there are wetlands shown, the applicant has gone through the process to look at those wetlands and they have a determination from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” Williams said.

He made available a letter concerning the Corps of Engineers report.

No timeline yet

At this point the city has received no estimate of the developer’s cost of the project, which would be information required at a later permitting step, and Williams had no timeline for the actual start of construction.

“Not at this time,” he said. “I mean, there’s quite a lot to do still. Some approvals of this nature take longer than others, and for something this big, with this many moving parts, it might be a bit. I’ve been proven wrong before on developments, and they are looking to move forward, but until we have submittals, there’s no way we can estimate a timeframe.”