Please attend and show support for Main Street, Georgetown
From Georgtown Gazette, March 31, 2016, Letters to the Editor
Dollar General is a gargantuan design
To the people of the Georgetown Divide and El Dorado County, I am reaching out to you with good news, that the Dollar General project approved by our planning commissioners is not a done deal, the jury is still out. The Georgetown Preservation Society has appealed this project directly to the Board of supervisors and consequently we have a hearing date set for Tuesday April 5th, at 2pm.
We need all the support we can get from concerned citizens who love or care about historic Georgetown. Folks, you need to come out to this Board Meeting if we are to steer the County toward the right decision about this very important matter. They’ve heard from some of us but not from enough of us. There are critical issues at stake including flooding, the fate of Empire Creek and the unknown condition and extent of an underground mine.
As concerning our cultural resources and tourism, guidelines of the General Plan that protect against the defacement of historic districts, in spite of all the commentary from the public, has been ignored by our government.. The Dollar General would be a massive structure, and if they had wanted to put it over on Highway 193 somewhere, they wouldn’t be facing this opposition. Mr. Beam has the right to sell or develop his three parcels, but let’s keep it historical Georgetown, as all the others on Main Street have. If we band together we can save our town. If we don’t, this project will be the end of Georgetown as we know it. The gargantuan design will be unlike any architecture from the California gold rush era, nor does it fit in with the Victorian structures surviving and maintained in the area until now. As you all know they want to construct Dollar General and a great big lighted parking lot and loading dock along Main Street, between the stamp mill and the rest of the historic town, across the street from the oldest hotel. As Jeff Worton said at a hearing, it is a spaceship landing in town. I invite you all to join me and GPS at the April 5 hearing to shut this irreversible act of defacement down.
DAVE SOUZA
Meeting Location:
Board of Supervisors
Building A
330 Fair Lane, Placerville, CA
Otherwise, your only options are to hold the Planning Commission to the design standards of a Design Community overlay, or to not combine the three parcels.
Because the parcels are zoned commercial you can’t really fight the commercial use, but you can challenge health and safety issues, such as water, sewer, transportation, drainage, etc. and challenge the look of the buildings based on the following DC development codes:
Save Our County - Joint Coalition 
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