FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The parking lot at the Publix grocery store under construction on U.S. 98/Greeno Road at Parker Road will include 25 percent pervious paving materials, as originally approved in the site plan for The Shoppes at Fairhope Village in the Fly Creek planned unit development.

But Regency Centers, the developer of the property, recently sought to change those plans and use an alternative method of draining water from the property that would not include permeable pavement materials.

“They said they had run into a clay layer so impervious that the water would just stand there,” said Jim Horner, chairman of the Fairhope Environmental Advisory Board, referring to the developer’s presentation at the Sept. 2 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting to modify the pervious pavement requirements. “That was kind of new to everyone, especially at that late date.”

About a month before the Sept. 2 meeting, the city issued a stop-work order for the project, one day after rainfall overwhelmed silt fencing and spilled a large amount of mud into the yard in front of Wachovia Bank. The bank lies at the foot of a massive new dirt retention wall built along the southern edge of the highly elevated construction site on U.S. 98. After a week-long shutdown, the city allowed the project to move forward after changes were made in stormwater controls.

During the Sept. 2 hearing, representatives for the developer and its engineering firm, Volkert and Associates, explained why the change to an alternative method was requested, but the city’s planning department insisted the 25 percent pervious materials commitment remain.

The staff report of the city’s planning department described the request and recommended denial of the alternative plan of placing inlets throughout the parking lot.

“As a condition of approval, twenty-five percent of the parking lot shall be constructed of pervious materials (i.e., pervious asphalt, pervious concrete, pervious pavers),” the report stated. “Due to the site being located in a sensitive area along Fly Creek, this condition was added to help absorb excessive runoff created by the expansive asphalt parking area shown on the plans. In lieu of the pervious building materials, the applicant is proposing to amend the site plan by adding a series of inlets throughout the parking lot to capture a portion of runoff from the site.”

The commission voted to table the item and continue it to the Oct. 6 meeting.

Subsequent consultations with manufacturers of pervious materials and additional information sought from Volkert led to the conclusion that the applicant’s representations that pervious materials would not work on the property were not true, Horner said.

“It came out that they did not have an impervious clay layer,” said Horner, referring to meetings and research that took place after the Sept. 2 meeting. “The ‘saturated hydraulic conductivity’ of the soil was 0.5 to 2 inches per hour. It’s not like sand, but it’s decent drainage.”

The item was withdrawn from the Oct. 6 agenda last week, after the developer agreed to use 25 percent pervious materials in the parking lot.

“Regency will be revising our pervious material in the parking lot from porous asphalt to pervious concrete,” said Jack Heinemann, of Regency Centers, in a Sept. 29 e-mail to the planning department. “We will apply the pervious concrete to the same area as shown on the site plans, but with a different cross section due to the superior structural qualities of pervious concrete, revised cross section to follow. We’re comfortable with the long-term sustainability of the pervious concrete.”

The planning department approved Regency’s use of pervious concrete by e-mail earlier that day, stating that the commission did not need to give its approval of that approach.

“It was apparent that it didn’t matter to the city whether (the pervious pavement plan) was going to fail or not,” Bell said Tuesday referring to the earlier request to use an alternative method without pervious materials. “We’ve had to figure out how to make it work.”