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By a 3 to 1 vote with Commissioner Frank
Drake voting no, the Wake Forest
Comprehensive Planning Committee agreed
Tuesday morning to send the plans for
Holding Village to the town board, which
will have to make a decision about
additional water from Raleigh to serve
the planned businesses and 1,231 homes.
Holding Village, because of
a number of water conservation measures
that include a pledge not to use the
town’s water for irrigation, will use
only slightly more than the 800 three-
and four-bedroom homes that could fit on
the 256 acres, Roger Perry with East
West Partners in Chapel Hill pointed
out. His figures were 173,000 gallons a
day for Holding Village versus 162,000
for the 800 single-family homes.
Perry is planning the site
with Scott Murray, a landscape
architect, and the Holding family. The
family, which has formed a company,
Entrust Holdings, was represented at
Tuesday’s meeting by Bill Andrews, who
is married to a Holding daughter, and
Libby Holding Perry.
“Through this type of
mixed-use development, we will build 50
percent more housing while utilizing
slightly more water than you would if
you were building a traditional urban
neighborhood,” Perry wrote in a sheet
showing water use.
An analysis of the project
done by Planning Director Chip Russell
said the peak water use for the 1,200
homes would be 300,000 gallons per day.
The town’s water contract
with Raleigh is based on peak-day use
with a limit of 4.9 million gallons a
day through 2010. Russell said the peak
use this summer was 3.6 million gallons
even though the town has added 1,000 new
homes in the past year. In 2005, a
drought year, the peak was 3.79 million
gallons.
The goal this year is to
permit no more than 800 new homes. From
January through August the town has
issued permits for 522 homes that will
connect to the water system. There are
40 approved current subdivisions with a
total of 1,368 possible homes this year.
Russell pointed out that builders
“aren’t coming close” to using their
total permit allotments, which are 50
per subdivision per year for those
approved before the board cut the
allotment to 40 earlier this year.
Although the details were a
little sketchy, Roger Perry said they
would like to break ground in 2007 and
build the project out in five to six
years. They are asking for 100 building
permits in 2007, 200 permits a year
thereafter with the 264 apartments added
in one of those years.
The breakdown of different
style homes is roughly 34 single-family
homes on larger lots, 307 single-family
homes on smaller lots with several of
those around the 14-acre pond, 112
cottages, 261 townhouses, 26 condos
above retail shops, 14 duplexes, 213
condos and 264 apartments.
Roger Perry said the condos
and townhouses would start at $125,000
to $140,000, and the single-family homes
would cost $500,000 to $600,000.
Although Russell’s analysis says there
is no affordable housing, Perry said
teachers and town employees should be
able to afford homes in Holding Village.
Along with the water
allocation, the developers are asking
the town to amend its zoning ordinances
to allow for this new neighborhood
district with this density and to
approve the text of the master plan.
Russell began the meeting by
saying the development, part of what was
once an 800-acre dairy farm, is in the
area designated as the town center. “It
is the type of development that will
carry on the characteristics of the
older part of Wake Forest.”
Russell, Roger Perry and
others used the terms traditional
neighborhood and new urbanism in
discussing the project. Murray and Libby
Perry stressed the walkability and
accessibility.
“We wanted to build a
community that has a sense of vibrancy
and people involving themselves with
each other,” Libby Perry said. “We are
trying to bring about an old concept,
encouraging people to get out of their
homes.”
It will be an infill
development, nestled between the N.C. 98
bypass to the north and a cut-off
portion of Forestville Road to the
south. The CSX railroad, the town’s
operations center and Friendship Chapel
Baptist Church are to the east, and the
Dameron property, Heritage North and two
Heritage neighborhoods are to the west.
There will be seven points
of access, but the major roads crossing
Holding Village would be Franklin Street
and Friendship Chapel Road.
Commissioner David Camacho,
who chairs the comprehensive planning
committee, said the town board has been
very concerned about transportation and
developing north-south and east-wet
corridors. “Franklin Street is one of
the key ones and to a lesser extent
Friendship Chapel is for east-west. How
are you going to move cars and not
adversely affect the viability of your
project?”
Roger Perry’s plan calls for
Franklin Street to enter the project as
a four-lane street with a median that
will divide into two one-way streets
embracing the retail area and then join
again shortly before meeting the street
section already built in Heritage.
“By bifurcating Franklin
Street, it will allow intersections to
be much less congested,” Roger Perry
said.
“Can we mesh the two
interests, yours in slowing traffic down
and ours in moving cars?” Camacho asked.
“We need as many parallel north-south
connectors as we can get.”
Perry said the bifurcated
plan had worked as the Falls River
Parkway in the Raleigh subdivision they
built, and Andrews pointed out that
Glenwood Avenue near Five Points in
Raleigh moves traffic well.
Friendship Chapel would have
a T intersection at an offshoot of
Franklin Street soon after entering the
development from the west, turn south
briefly, then east on a major unnamed
collector street that bisects the retail
area and finally leave to the east.
In the town’s current
transportation plan, adopted in 2003,
the grade crossing at the CSX rail line
on Friendship Chapel Road between South
Main Street and the proposed development
is slated to be closed in the future,
but Town Manager Mark Williams said the
town commissioners have never reached an
agreement with CSX or the state about
the closure.
Friendship Chapel is the
only direct link to South Main Street
for the project and for the Dameron and
Ammons developments to the east. Asked
about that closure, Roger Perry said it
was “an offsite issue” and Russell said
the town knows it needs to address the
grade crossings.
“Where are you going to put
the two point two cars per household?”
Drake asked. “I’ve seen Falls River, and
every house has two point two cars.
Where are people going to park who are
going to the amphitheater?” The plan
calls for an amphitheater and community
park on the northwest side of the
14-acre pond.
Roger Perry said many of the
homes would have one or two bedrooms
with only one or two people living
there.
Drake also wanted to know
about bus shelters and provision for
urban rail or other transportation
methods, and Perry said they were
prepared to do whatever the town
required.
Planning board chairman Bob
Hill asked if they would assure that all
the people working on the project are
either American citizens or legal
immigrants.
“If that was the criteria,
the construction industry would cease to
exist,” Perry said. He could ask his
subcontractors to affirm they will abide
by such a policy, but it would not be
possible when it gets to house
construction. “You wouldn’t get any
houses built.”
The new urbanism “will have
an extremely benign effect on the
economy and on the environment,” Perry
said, and part of that plan is a number
of water conservation measures. Those
include low-flow toilets, shower heads
and faucets; high efficiency dishwashers
and washing machines; smart irrigation
limited to small front yards with
water-efficient landscaping; and
on-demand hot water.
Andrews said they were
investigating using the two wells and
the pond for irrigation and having a
master control for irrigation. “We are
trying to be a new benchmark for water
irrigation, not just here but for the
area.”
Later Perry agreed the
irrigation system would not be connected
to the town’s drinking water system.
Hill said he thought the
plan is “wonderful and attractive and
well-thought-out,’ and he then asked for
reasons for it to be given a top
priority.
“This is the most reasonable
and logical place for development in
Wake Forest,” Perry said, citing its
extension of the Renaissance Plan ideas,
its mix of housing, the greenways and
parks.
“I don’t think there is any
question but that this is the Rolls
Royce of development,” planning board
member Kim Parker said. But, “we can’t
afford it on the water side. They are
asking us to put them ahead of everybody
else in line. Is that something the
committee is willing to do?” He
suggested the developers go “arm in arm”
with the town to Raleigh to ask for more
water. (Currently, an additional
capacity of a million gallons will cost
$3.5 million.)
“If we put this project
first, we get to tell somebody else,
sorry,” Drake said.
After Hill made the motion
to send the plan to the full town board,
Camacho said, “If the water allocation
is not addressed, we’re not going
anywhere with this.”
Russell agreed. “We need to
deal with the allocation issue first.”
A discussion about the
appearance of downtown was delayed
because, Stinnett said, there had been
improvements.
(For more information
about new urbanism, you can start at
http://www.cnu.org, the site for the
Congress for New Urbanism. At the site
click on “About New Urbanism” and then
take the “Tour” PowerPoint presentation.
Other sites you can visit
are
http://www.newurbanist.com,
http://wwwdpz.com and
http://www.newurbanism.org.)
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