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The Wake Forest Planning Board
unanimously recommended approval of the
master plan for a Lone Star restaurant
on Durham Road and Retail Drive even
though members, town board members and a
neighbor questioned a wetland and stream
buffers, the number of parking spaces
and narrowing Warmoven Street from
Crenshaw Hall Plantation subdivision to
two lanes.
Planning board member Ward
Marotti persistently questioned whether
there are state Division of Water
Quality and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
approvals to impact a wetland that is
shown on the site plan but depicted as a
stream on the county’s soil map.
Planner Ann Ayers, Deputy
Town Manager Roe O’Donnell and assistant
engineer Holly Spring assured him all
the proper permits and findings have
been secured by the developer, Crown
Companies from Dobson.
Commissioner Frank Drake
wanted to know how this plan, with 324
seats in the restaurant and 133 parking
spaces, compares to a plan that was
rejected several years ago for an
Outback restaurant on Wake Union Church
Road.
Ayers said the Outback plan
was close to the limit of 70 percent
impervious cover allowed in the Falls
Lake watershed.
The Lone Star restaurant is
in the protected Richland Creek
watershed and has 55 percent impervious
cover.
Planning Director Chip
Russell said he would provide all the
comparisons between the two for the town
board meeting on Jan. 17.
Commissioner Margaret Jones
Stinnett, who operated her family’s
business, Jones Hardware, across Retail
Drive from the Lone Star site, said the
two-lane width of Warmoven at Retail
Drive would make it difficult for a
contractor with a truck and trailer to
make a turn into the restaurant. “Why
not make it wider and put no parking
there?”
Ayers said it was planned as
a traffic-calming measure.
Scott Finley, who lives on
Warmoven, said, “My concern is that this
will be a cut-through” for traffic from
Old N.C. 98 frustrated by the long wait
to turn right onto N.C. 98 (Durham
Road).
“We have 12 children in
seven houses on our corner,” Finley
said. “I would like to see it (Warmoven)
cut off and be a dead-end road or at
least cut it down [to two lanes] as it’s
planned and add speed bumps.”
Finley also asked for a
natural buffer of several types of trees
between the restaurant and the
neighborhood “to cut off the light
pollution and the noise pollution we
know is going to come.” He added he is
looking forward to the Starbucks that is
reportedly planned at the adjacent
corner of Warmoven and Retail Drive. He
thanked the town for installing speed
bumps and stop signs in the subdivision
at the residents’ request. |
