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The Mount Airy Town Council on Monday rejected a proposal to annex eight acres on Buffalo Road where the owner wanted to build a recreation center.

Mayor Dave Pyatt and councilmen Chris Everich, Peter Helt and Gary Nelson voted against the annexation, while Councilwoman Wendi Peters was the lone vote in favor.

"I think it's the right thing to do, and takes us to the next step," Peters said before the vote.

Retired veterinarian Emmett Full owns the land — called the Rigler property — north of town. He wanted to build a recreation center that might have included fields for soccer and lacrosse, and an indoor facility for volleyball, basketball, trampolines and community meeting room. Plans also included batting cages and a mini-golf course. The footprint of the facility would have been about 80,000 square feet including offices and a second floor viewing area.

The land is mostly in Carroll County, and has zoning for one house per acre or a recreation center with special permission. Full needed the Town of Mount Airy to annex the land so he could access the town's water and sewer system.

"I could have done what I wanted to do on the county basis, but really I didn't want to do it because I wanted this project to be a Mount Airy project," Full said.

In the spring, the town's planning commission recommended that the council not annex the property, citing water issues and the effect it would have on neighborhoods. The property is next to the Summit Ridge subdivision, causing many residents in that neighborhood to oppose the proposal, saying a recreation center would block views, snarl traffic, and create noise and light pollution.

But the town overall was split evenly about the plan, creating divisiveness that Nelson called on Monday night "some of the worst small town petty politics that I have seen."

Peters said most in town agreed the facility was wanted, even though location was the issue.

"Good leaders make the tough decisions about what's best for the town overall, then work hard to bring people together after that," she said. "This is not about denigrating or putting down part of the community."

Some were concerned it would create worse water shortages while others saw the benefits of a recreation center.

Many sat in the audience Monday night with signs in support of Full's plan while council members debated what to base their vote on.

Full said he was disappointed at the decision.

"Probably not so much for myself as I was for the people of Mount Airy," he said, saying he and his supporters had been planning to put the project into motion in the near future, and the sports center could have been finished in a couple of years.

He acknowledged that use of the property seemed more of an issue than the annexation itself. Council members agreed that the recreation center was a good idea and a desire of the community as a whole.

"I haven't come across a single person that's against the concept of a rather large community recreation center in town," Everich said, saying that the Mount Airy Planning and Zoning Commission has been careful to direct commercial development on Main Street, Center Street and the Twin Arch Business Park, but "this doesn't make sense in this particular area."

Members did not agree on taking the chance of the estimated $6 million or $7 million facility funded by Full ending up on the Rigler property.

Full and his company, Buffalo Road Investment LLC, have six months to bring the petition back if desired.

The next move is to meet with a lawyer.

"It's certainly a big setback here.... We'll see what our options are," he said. "They've taken a piece of property they told me they wanted to annex, then they denied it when I bought it. ... I was following the master plan as it was written and was trying to follow the town code in everything that we have done, then they refuse it."

Full said he could drop the project entirely if he couldn't get cooperation from the town.