|
Residential
building in Wake Forest is “a little
slow” this year, Planning Director Chip
Russell said Tuesday morning to a large
crowd at the Wake Forest Chamber of
Commerce’s Business Before Hours.
Slow means there may be 800
residential building permits in 2006. In
the past couple years, the town has seen
between 800 and 1,000 new homes. A
thousand homes are good for the budget,
Russell said, but 800 are a good fit for
the town’s water situation.
One reason for fewer homes
is there are no apartments being built.
Another, Russell said, “There are a lot
of tracts that are not on the market.”
Instead of homes, Russell
said it is now time for the next wave of
commercial development.
Beginning at the South Main
Street-Capital Boulevard intersection
and going north, Glenn Boyd will soon
build a Nissan dealership on the site of
the former Weavexx plant.
Just a bit north, there are
no tenants yet for the Shoppes at
Caveness Farm shopping center, but a
number of outparcels have been sold or
leased to restaurant chains. This
brought a groan from Steve Hooker, the
manager of Milton’s Pizza & Pasta, who
hosted the event, but Russell told him
there were no pizza places. The
restaurants are Chili’s, Red Robin and
Texas Roadhouse.
Carolina Ale House is
expected to open on an outparcel at
North Park next year.
Plans are not firm, but
Russell said it appears the new owners
of the Parker-Hannifin plant and land
will demolish the building to make way
for a new shopping center. He said they
had decided it would be too costly to
renovate the building.
On N.C. 98 and Retail Drive,
a Lone Star Steakhouse is planned. The
land has been cleared, and Russell said
the owners are deciding how large the
restaurant should be.
On the other side of town,
at the N.C. 98-Jones Dairy Road
intersection, a shopping center is also
planned with a grocery store and local
shops in the first phase.
One of the busiest
commercial strips is Star Road. “There’s
a lot of action on those parcels”
between Chris Leith’s Dodge dealership
and the small white houses at the end of
the frontage road. Those houses will
remain; the action is about the vacant
parcels.
Russell said the challenge
for his department is to provide access
to the land in an orderly fashion. At
the northern end of Star Road on South
Main, there is only right-in, right-out
access. The trick is to have alternate
access “so everybody doesn’t have to go
on Capital.”
Russell answered a variety
of questions.
There are no plans yet for
Wake Forest Plaza on Elm Avenue where
CVS is now and Winn-Dixie once was.
Steel is going up for the new CVS on
Roosevelt Avenue; “That’s a nice plus,”
Russell said.
He talked about the campus
area for the new town hall along Brooks
Street and Elm Avenue, and mentioned the
mixed-use building planned on East Jones
Avenue that will mix retail with condos.
Construction on the third
leg of the bypass has been bumped back a
year. “We’re not alone. It gets down to
money,” Russell said.
Traffic backs up in both
north and south at the bypass traffic
signal at South Main Street. “There’s
not enough green time on One-A,” Russell
said, but said it was a natural
progression to get the signal times
right.
Ligon Mill Road will be a
parallel road to South Main and Capital
Boulevard, running between them up to
the bypass, then to N.C. 98 (Durham
Road) and beyond. The portion from the
bypass south to Caveness Farms Avenue
will be built soon. South of there,
there are streams that must be crossed –
and a sewer pump station that must be
moved that he did not mention. “We’ve
got to get that built,” Russell said,
and it will be, based on the
development.
South Main from Capital to
Rogers Road should be repaired and
resurfaced this fall, Russell said,
although some drop-dead dates for the
work to begin have already passed. The
only plan now to widen South Main is for
the section from Rogers to just north of
Forbes Road. “North of that you get into
a neighborhood,” Russell said, and the
plan now is to provide some parallel
roads and keep South Main at no more
than three lanes.
Work on Joyner Park on Oak
Street/Will Wall Road and Harris Road
will begin next year with construction
of an amphitheater, trails and
renovations to the barn and pecan grove.
Some recent comments have
raised hackles in Franklin County. “We
can provide water and sewer,” Russell
said, and the aim now is to talk with
officials in the county and in
Youngsville about the best way to
provide services to those areas along
the county line. Wake and Franklin are
trying to sort out the questionable
county line, and Russell said it had
been a problem for 30 years. |
