New retail business coming
New retail business coming to town, traffic lights nixed
By MARVIN BAKER
EDITOR
In a marathon meeting that lasted late into the night Wednesday, the New Town City Council took action on numerous topics, discussed many more and heard from interested parties regarding roads, traffic signs and financial reports.
In one lengthy debate, the council talked about a new business, Family Dollar, that is coming to town. It’s a chain of retail stores across the Midwest and will be locating in New Town later this year on East Avenue southeast of Dakota West Credit Union and west of Northrop Grumman.
First, there is a lot of work to accomplish and the beginning of Family Dollar’s selected location wasn’t without dissent. Triple C Development, an organization that is developing the property, wanted access to N.D. Highway 23 on behalf of the Charlotte, N.C., company, but council members insisted the access road would be the frontage road, or East Avenue.
At that point in time, Triple C representatives told the council they were ready to back out, however, additional debate changed the outcome, a compromise was reached and a building permit was issued.
Family Dollar will have access to N.D. 23, however, the road must meet specifications of the city of New Town to be approved. The store will actually be located immediately southeast of Dakota West Credit Union and customers will be able to enter the store’s parking lot from either N.D. 23 or East Avenue.
In other business:
* Mountrail County Deputy Corey Bristol met with the council to talk about traffic control in downtown New Town and let the council know that lights to control traffic are on the way.
The council had discussed stop lights at the corners of N.D. Highway 1804 and Soo Place on numerous occasions and had OK’d the expenditure to do so. But on further analysis, it was revealed, and confirmed by Bristol on Wednesday, that if traffic were to stop on N.D. 23, which is also New Town’s Main Street, it would create more problems than it solves.
For instance, even for a few seconds, traffic would back up to a point where it would be constant when the light is green and that would make it literally impossible to cross the street. Trucks would be unable to make their turns without running over curbs and emergency vehicles would most likely have to take alternative routes to get through that type of congestion.
