[1/7/04]Frozen custard, crepes and coffee are to be available from a drive-through eatery that cleared a zoning-board hurdle Tuesday to build outside SuperValu Fresh Foods.

Madison businessman Lee Duddleston gained the Vicksburg Zoning Board of Appeals’ approval for an exception to allow a modular building to be placed in the parking lot at 2511 N. Frontage Road.

“It will look like a stucco building,” Duddleston told the board of the 232-square-foot, pre-assembled unit. “It won’t have any look at all of a manufactured building.”

The request was one of three to come before the board during its regular monthly meeting Tuesday evening at City Hall.

Separately, the owners of Reliable Motors, 3438 Halls Ferry Road, were denied permission to make the business’ new home a modular building they would have placed at 1661 N. Frontage Road.

And Magnolia Estates Home Sales Center, 1333 U.S. 61 South, was granted an exception to display one of its show homes at Vicksburg Factory Outlets, 4000 S. Frontage Road, for up to 21 days at a time, three times a year.

The drive-through restaurant would be one of the first two Duddleston plans to locate as part of his start-up chain, he said. The other would be in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

The variance was needed because city zoning codes require such commercial structures to be built on their sites. Duddleston’s plan is similar to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream drive-through off Pemberton Boulevard.

At Duddleston’s request, the zoning board recommended approval of two amendments to the city’s zoning code and granted an exception to allow the modular unit. If the city’s board of mayor and aldermen concurs, the eatery could be operational within about two months, he said.

Plans call for it to have a drive-through window and, pending approval of a separate request, a walk-up window as well. It would be staffed by one to two employees, Duddleston said.

Reliable Motors owners Bill Garmon and Darin Lambert asked for an exception to install a five-office manufactured building and a rock parking lot on North Frontage Road east of Halls Ferry Road.

With board members Jack Burrell, Tim Fagerburg and Lonnie Boykin voting against the plan, it was denied on a 3-2 vote. Casey Fisher and Bob Walters cast the dissenting votes.

Walters had proposed approval of the plan on the condition that the owners alter their plan and have the site’s parking lot paved before beginning operation there.

Fagerburg explained that the board had allowed similar exceptions only for businesses with plans to eventually replace modular structures with ones of more permanent construction.

“That’s the way this board has looked at things in the past,” Fagerburg said.

Garmon and Lambert could register an appeal of the board’s decision to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen within 10 days, Fagerburg added.

In the Magnolia Estates plan, manufactured-home dealership owner Shane Upshaw would lease a small sales office at the outlet center while a home was on display.

“It’s like having a car in the mall for people to come and look at,” Upshaw said.

The two most likely times of the year such displays would take place are during the spring selling season and around the Christmas shopping season, Upshaw said.

Fagerburg, the board chairman, solicited public comment on the plans, but the only speakers to the board were the plans’ presenters.