A rural byway near the town of Green Level has become the unlikely battleground over a plan to resurrect a flea market that was recently ejected from its long-time abode on the outskirts of Mebane.
Over the past couple of months, backers of this now defunct flea market along Buckhorn Road have been laying the groundwork for a new outdoor bazaar along Stonewall Springs Road – a dead end street that lies within Green Level’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
This inchoate proposal has found plenty of support among the former flea market’s vendors, who include a large number of Hispanic entrepreneurs from outside of Alamance County. Their hopes have nevertheless run into stiff opposition from Green Level residents, who’ve launched a well-organized campaign against the flea market’s relocation to their neck of the woods.
In the meantime, Green Level’s municipal leaders have found themselves in an unenviable position as the two sides in this controversy get ready to square off at a special town council meeting on September 12.
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The fuse for this veritable tinderbox was originally lit earlier this summer when Mebane’s city council approved a rezoning request that will enable a new trucking terminal to park its wheels on an 84-acre site near the interstate interchange for Buckhorn Road.
The council’s decision on the evening of July 1 came at a high cost to the patrons and vendors of the aforementioned flea market, which had operated at this location for the better part of four decades. Although the flea market’s habitués had shown up en masse to oppose the rezoning request, its passage left them with no choice but to fold up their shop stalls and seek other venues to retail their wares.
The default destination for many of these displaced flea marketeers soon became a 24-acre tract that Christopher and Charity Proffit own next to their home along Stonewall Springs Road.
On June 19, Christopher Proffit filed an application with the town of Green Level to set up a flea market on this now-vacant parcel. Barrett Brown, Green Level’s municipal administrator, admitted that Proffit’s proposal ran into immediate problems with the town’s development rules.
“As soon as he put in the application, he started clearing land and telling people about it. These people showed up at a council meeting, and the council didn’t know what they were talking about because it was all premature.”
– Green Level’s administrator Barrett Brown on the push from Buckhorn flea market vendors for proposed operation on Stonewall Springs Road
“Their application was denied because the property isn’t zoned for what they want to do,” Brown recalled in an interview earlier this week, “and we’ve sort of parlayed that into a request for rezoning.”
Out of the blue
Proffit’s original application was eventually supplanted by a request to reclassify the property from residential to highway business use. But even before the ink was dry on the requisite paperwork, vendors from the erstwhile Buckhorn flea market were already rallying the troops for a march on Green Level’s town hall.
Last month, the refugees from Buckhorn Road approached Green Level’s town council during a designated public comment period to plead their case for a flea market along Stonewall Springs Road. According to Brown, this unscheduled appearance came as an utter surprise to much of the council, who weren’t even aware of Proffit’s plans for the flea market.
“As soon as he put in the application,” the town’s administrator explained, “he started clearing land and telling people about it. These people showed up at a council meeting, and the council didn’t know what they were talking about because it was all premature.”
Many of the flea market’s backers would return to Green Level on August 6, when Proffit’s rezoning request made its formal debut at a regularly-scheduled meeting of the town’s planning board.
Proffit and his wife were ultimately among those who addressed the planning board’s members that evening – as was Arlon Proffit, who had served as the Buckhorn flea market’s manager for the final three years of its four-decade run. The town’s planning board also heard from Graham resident Melissa Cortez, who offered herself up as “a voice for all the Spanish[-speaking] people” who were in attendance.
“The majority that is here are families that have had their businesses at the Buckhorn flea market for years. This is their way of living…We are looking forward to having more people come to join us and make Green Level prosper.”
– Melissa Cortez, self-described spokeswoman for flea market vendors, in remarks to Green Level’s planning board on August 6
“The majority that is here are families that have had their businesses at the Buckhorn flea market for years,” Cortez declared when she got her turn at the podium. “This is their way of living. The news of possibly having this flea market somewhere close…is really great news. We are looking forward to having more people come to join us and make Green Level prosper.”
Cortez went on to act as a translator for a handful of Spanish-speaking vendors who addressed the planning board’s members. The board also heard from Idalia Gallegos, a Burlington-based vendor who delivered her remarks to the board in English.
“The closing of that flea market affected more than 600 families emotionally and economically,” Gallegos recalled during that evening’s meeting. “We are here to support Christopher, the owner of the land…We are not asking for anything for free. We are just asking for a space to work.”
Not in our backyard…
The flea market’s supporters were nevertheless countered by a half dozen or so people who live near the property up for rezoning. These reluctant neighbors included several property owners along Stonewall Springs Road, which meanders past farm fields, forests, and a handful of homes before it dead ends north of Haw River’s municipal limits.
The prospect of a retail Mecca in this rustic setting didn’t go over too well with Kelly Bollinger, who lives near the Stonewall Springs’ intersection with Sandy Cross Road.
“This rezoning request is absurd and incompatible with the existing use of land in this area…Stonewall Springs does not, and cannot, meet the requirements for property zoned highway business…This type of activity does not belong in a neighborhood with households ranging from very young to very old.”
– Sandy Cross Road resident Kelly Bollinger
“This rezoning request is absurd and incompatible with the existing use of land in this area,” Bollinger argued when she got her chance to address the town’s planning board. “Stonewall Springs does not, and cannot, meet the requirements for property zoned highway business…This type of activity does not belong in a neighborhood with households ranging from very young to very old.”
Bollinger went on to recount news coverage of the Buckhorn flea market that had estimated it routinely attracted about 40,000 vehicles each weekend. Bollinger insisted that even 10,000 vehicles would be too much of a strain for the rudimentary infrastructure along Stonewall Springs Road. She also alluded to newspaper accounts about the crime that reportedly accompanied the weekly gatherings along Buckhorn Road, which she said had included everything from assaults and illegal drug use to the sale of counterfeit merchandise.
Bollinger’s concerns about the proposed flea market were reiterated by Stonewall Springs resident Robert Warren, who was particularly worried about the potential disturbance to the county’s emergency services.
“With the history of 40,000 visitors per weekend mentioned in a recent news article, you can imagine how difficult it would be for emergency vehicles . . . It would tie up emergency services that are already understaffed . . . How are they going to get in and out in a reasonable time?”
– Robert Warren, resident of Stonewall Springs Road
“With the history of 40,000 visitors per weekend mentioned in a recent news article, you can imagine how difficult it would be for emergency vehicles,” Warren told the town’s planning board. “It would tie up emergency services that are already understaffed…How are they going to get in and out in a reasonable time?”
The potential influx of visitors was equally disconcerting to Samuel Wilson, who described himself as a relatively recent transplant to Stonewall Springs Road. Like most of the proposal’s other opponents, Wilson based his projections of the flea market’s impact on the formidable draw of the Buckhorn Road operation.
“I’ve seen traffic backed all the way down the interstate, down the on ramp and off ramp, trying to feed that flea market,” he said. “I’m not opposed to the flea market, but this is not the place for it.”
The coming storm
The flea market’s supporters did not let these nightmarish predictions go unanswered during the planning board’s meeting.
In response to the opposition’s accounts of 40,000 vehicles at Buckhorn Road operation, Arlon Proffit insisted that his experience as its acting manager was a much more modest 4,000 vehicles during the twilight years of the former flea market’s run.
Meanwhile, Christopher Proffit’s wife Charity assured the planning board’s members that she and her husband have no intentions of developing anything on the magnitude of the Buckhorn flea market.
“We are not Buckhorn,” she insisted. “We have two kids, and we’re not going to invite crime to the neighborhood that we also live in.”
In the end, the town’s planning board was unable to reach a consensus on Christopher Proffit’s rezoning request. The group’s members decided, instead, to resume their deliberations at their next meeting, which is scheduled to take place this Tuesday, September 3.
In the meantime, angst about the proposed operation seems to have spread beyond its epicenter along Stonewall Springs Road. Since the planning board’s meeting, yard signs urging “No Green Level Flea Market” have been popping up all along Sandy Cross Road. The campaign against the flea market has also left its mark on Green Level’s municipal buildings, where a number of the red and white yard signs are bound to attract the attention of anyone driving through town.
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Brown, who officiated the proceedings on August 6, conceded that the current sentiment among the town’s residents doesn’t appear to be very favorable to the proposed flea market.
“The residents who live in Green Level town proper and the extraterritorial area seem to be against the flea market,” he went on to explain. “The support that we’ve seen for the flea market seems to be from people who have a business interest and who don’t live in Green Level.”
At the same time, Brown acknowledged that many of the concerns raised during the planning board meeting are outside the scope of the rezoning request, which would permit a whole gamut of new uses if the property on Stonewall Springs Road is redesignated for highway business development.
Brown alluded to this limited purview during the planning board meeting. He also acknowledged that the town’s municipal staff has yet to look into issues like emergency access and traffic control because they lie above and beyond the parameters of a simple zoning change.
“The town hasn’t done anything,” he confessed in response to an inquiry from one planning board member. “We have made no investigation into traffic or roads…and the staff has no recommendation for or against it.”
See comprehensive coverage of Mebane city council’s deliberation on rezoning for two projects on the site of the former Buckhorn flea market. https://alamancenews.com/comprehensive-coverage-mebane-city-councils-buckhorn-road-rezoning/
Photo of the crowd at July 1 Mebane city council meeting:
