Ted Daum has nothing against Phil Doud.

But when he heard the local Toyota dealer wanted to move his growing business to south Corvallis, Daum was shocked. His neighborhood, Daum says, doesn’t need car lots — it needs a major grocery store and other shops to serve the everyday needs of the people who live there.

“Why an auto mall? It just doesn’t make sense, from a land-use point of view,” said Daum, a 49-year-old environmental consultant who moved his family to Willamette Landing in December. “It’s not smart growth.”

Doud is asking the Corvallis Planning Commission to modify the conceptual development plan for Willamette Business Park, a 50-acre tract of unoccupied industrial land on the west side of U.S. Highway 99W between Goodnight and Rivergreen avenues.

The property was approved for a home improvement superstore in 2004, but to date no tenant for that project has been found. Doud wants 18.5 acres of the site to be set aside for three auto dealerships — allowable as a conditional use in the general industrial zone — with his John & Phil’s Toyota Scion Subaru in the middle. The home improvement center could still be built on the remaining acreage.

Although the written comments that poured in to the Planning Commission before last Wednesday’s cutoff are sharply divided on the proposal, Daum’s reaction is typical of the opposition.

With the help of two other couples, Daum and his wife collected 69 signatures on a petition urging the commissioners to deny the auto mall request and rezone the land for grocery and other retail use.

City planning officials counter that a better site already exists.

The South Corvallis Area Refinement Plan, adopted in 1998 after numerous public meetings, identifies the former livestock auction yard as the likeliest location for a supermarket south of the Highway 20/34 overpass.

Located on the east side of 99W between Richland and Park avenues, about two blocks south of Lincoln Elementary, it’s part of a 15-acre “town center” site. The area is zoned mixed-use commercial with room for up to 100,000 square feet of retail, potentially including a 60,000-square-foot grocery store.

Community Development Director Ken Gibb said there has been some interest from potential developers in building a supermarket on the site, but they generally concluded the population base of south Corvallis wouldn’t provide enough business.

That may be changing, thanks in large part to people like Daum.

Since January of 2000, the city has issued building permits for 509 residential units in southeast Corvallis, according to associate city planner Kevin Young. That includes 234 units in Willamette Landing, a fast-growing development that is only about half-finished.

“I think what we’ve all been hoping is that as more (residential) development happens, it will spur some interest in getting more services down there,” Gibb said.

The south Corvallis town center site has some challenges, Gibb acknowledged, including multiple owners and the presence of existing businesses. But the auction yard part of the property is not being used and is owned by a single entity that has been promoting the site for a supermarket.

Local contractor Tom Gerding, one of the partners in the auction yard site, said bringing John & Phil’s to southtown could make it easier to attract a grocery store to his site by drawing more shoppers to the area. National and regional supermarket chains, he said, want to see a critical mass of residents and “destination” retail outlets before committing to a particular location.

“What south Corvallis needs, in my opinion, is any sort of business that can step up traffic counts,” Gerding said. “If you can get the traffic counts up, now you’re going to see more businesses coming to south Corvallis, and you’re going to see some renovations.”

Tom Powell, another contractor who heads up the South Corvallis Neighbors association, thinks a lot of the local opposition to the John & Phil’s proposal stems from the south side’s pent-up demand for basic retail services — shops, restaurants, bank branches and, above all, a full-service supermarket.

“People in south Corvallis, they want a grocery store,” Powell said. “I don’t think there’s even a close second.”

Failing that, he said, “the default is ‘We want nothing.’”

For his part, Doud says he’s run out of options for growing his business in Corvallis. His current 3-acre site, in the auto row on Northwest Fifth Street, is too cramped for the new showroom he needs, and he’s been unable to find another site that’s both properly zoned and affordably priced.

“We looked at nine locations with the city, and this was the only one that would work for us and the city,” Doud said.

With luck, he hopes to be able to move his business to the Highway 99W location in the summer of 2007.

At the same time, he said, he sympathizes with southsiders clamoring for a full-service supermarket — and he thinks moving his car lot to their neighborhood could help them get it.

“There does need to be more development on the south end of Corvallis. There needs to be a grocery store and a Burger King and things like that,” Doud said.

“I think we are going to help that process. I think people are waiting for some development down there. ... They’re just waiting for a catalyst.”

The Planning Commission will deliberate on the John & Phil’s application in a hearing Wednesday night. Although no public testimony will be taken, the nine-member commission will consider all written comments submitted since the initial hearing on the matter March 1.

Daum hopes the commissioners will also take the desires of south Corvallis residents into account.

He and his neighbors, he said, are tired of having to drive across town for many of their basic needs, and he hopes their petition makes that point.

“At least we can send the message, ‘Hey, don’t take the people who live there for granted.’”

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.