ANYTHING BUT COMMERCIAL: CAPE INSURANCE AGENT REJOICES OVER REZONING, FINALLY

During the past five years, neighbors have twice quashed Bo Shantz's plans to build his new insurance office on the northeast corner of Perryville Road and Lexington Avenue, citing fears that it would open the door to an excess of commercial development.

Now, with virtually no neighborhood opposition, a plan to put in a 14-16 unit apartment complex -- and all the traffic it will bring -- on the property has quietly slipped through the Cape Girardeau City Council unopposed.

Shantz calls it poetic justice.

"If my insurance office had gone in, we maybe would have had 10 cars in there a day, and that's when we're at our busiest," Shantz said. "Now they're going to have 16 families with at least two cars per family coming and going all day. That's going to create more traffic than my office ever would have."

Neighbors say anything is better than commercial development.

All the property along Lexington Avenue and any new property annexed into the city limits is zoned as single-family residential until a request for rezoning is made. The council last week allowed the property to be rezoned to R-4, which allows multiple-family dwellings. No one showed up to protest.

"I have no idea why they weren't opposed to this. If I knew that, I guess I'd have the answer to the universe," said Shantz, who sold the property to the Rebel Group out of Cape Girardeau. Both sides are keeping mum on the price. "I don't know if Bo just made somebody angry or what."

Neighbors' complaints

In 1997 and 2000, the Cape Girardeau Planning and Zoning Commission recommended that Shantz be granted a special-use permit for a new office for State Farm Insurance Co. on the 1.83 acres that sits across from Wink's Food Store. Both times, the city council shot it down based on opposition from neighbors, who said commercial developments would bring more traffic and would tempt more developers to build businesses there.

"I was basically going to build a log house," Shantz said. "It wasn't going to look like a commercial building at all. They came out of the woodwork, hollering and screaming that this was not going to be a good idea for the neighborhood. Now look what they're going to get."

Lawyer Steve Wilson lives at 2209 Perryville Road. He said anything is better than commercial.

"I think it's just because it's a residential use is the reason nobody was up in arms this time," Wilson said. "With an office building, you get creeping commercialism. Then, before you know it, guys are coming in and saying He got commercial, why can't I do it?'"

Wilson said apartments may not be the ideal development.

"I'd just as soon see a single-family residence there, but a residential use is a residential use," he said.

John Essner, who lives at 1817 Meyer Drive, agreed.

"I don't want to speak badly against Bo, he had his ideas to do this and we just didn't agree," he said. "Besides, I never really thought traffic was the biggest obstacle. I was always just afraid that one commercial building would lead to others."

Upscale apartments

Virgil Jones, the managing member of the Rebel Group, described the project as "upscale townhome-style apartments." He said there will either be three or four buildings on the site -- one building of six units and two buildings of four units, or four buildings of four units. He hopes construction will begin this fall and end by this time next year.

"I don't know really what happened, but those people and Bo just didn't see eye to eye," Jones said. "In this business, that happens."

Shantz has since opened at a new location on Kingshighway.

"It's turned out OK," Shantz said. "I really would have loved to have my offices there, it would have been perfect. But sometimes things just don't work out the way you hope."