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Two
plans, one underway and one on the
drawing board, could provide 490 new
jobs in a facility similar to Springmoor
in Raleigh, at least 1,500 new homes, a
variety of stores and offices, new
streets, more recreation and upgrades to
infrastructure in the northeast part of
Wake Forest.
Roger Waldon with Clarion
Associates of Chapel Hill is heading up
the study that is underway, a $50,000
effort by the town, to determine the
needs, desires and opportunities in the
area north of Wait Avenue and east of
North White Street.
Heritage developer Andy
Ammons is about to start talks with the
town’s planning staff about his 800-acre
tract that lies to the east of the town
reservoir and extends from Wait Avenue
(N.C. 98) into Franklin County.
Ammons’ plans for the area
have been largely inactive since July of
2003 when he and Chuck Flink of
Greenways Inc. in Durham made a
presentation to the planning board about
their concept for a conservation
subdivision for the half of the tract
that lies in the reservoir’s watershed.
That concept is for homes
clustered along long cul-de-sac streets
on the ridge tops with grassed swales
rather than curb and gutters, leaving
the valleys and streams untouched. It
would provide much greater protection
for those streams and the reservoir than
a conventional subdivision.
On the land outside the
watershed, Ammons envisions a mix of
single-family homes and townhouses,
about 1,000 of them depending on the
mix.
The life care facility would
be on the western side of the tract,
with townhouses and patio homes for
active older adults and a nursing
facility like Springmoor in the center.
Ammons’ father built Springmoor, and the
family is still actively involved in it.
Ammons’ brother David is the manager,
and their mother chooses the furnishings
and colors when a room needs
redecorating.
Ammons recently estimated
the life care facility alone would add
$90 million to the town’s tax base along
with 490 jobs, about half full-time and
half part-time.
In 2003 he had planned a
20-acre school site to the south of the
care facility. Since then, Ammons said,
the staff person he had been discussing
the site with has left the school
system. He does not know if there is any
interest in the site now.
The plans in 2003 also
included a 100-acre commercial area
where Gillcrest Farm Road would cross a
realigned Oak Grove Church Road (the
extension of Juniper Avenue).
One of the new roads Ammons
plans would be a section of the future
northern loop that would run from the
intersection of Wait Avenue, the N.C. 98
bypass and Jones Dairy Road into the
reservoir tract and then curve westward.
Ammons submitted plans for
that to be a three-lane street as called
for in the town’s 2003 transportation
plan, but the plans have not been
approved. “I don’t know if DOT reviewed
it. I don’t know if it ever got to DOT.
It got bogged down a year ago or so,”
Ammons said.
Ammons also has not heard
the decision about a request for several
variances Flink submitted which would
allow for longer cul-de-sacs, narrower
streets and a trail on one side rather
than sidewalks on both. All would be
needed for the conservation subdivision.
Waldon and his team,
meanwhile, are pulling together basic
information about the northeast area and
beginning to talk with the area’s
residents in order to give the town
board an interim report late in the
spring.
“A big, big piece is talking
to the people and hearing their
concerns,” he said. “One issue is
recreation and a wish for better and
more recreation facilities.
“We want to get the help
from the people who are stakeholders in
the neighborhood, to help get people to
say what their hopes are.”
One part of the study is an
economic analysis. The northeast, Waldon
said, “is obviously an older
neighborhood right on the edge of
downtown but not able to benefit yet
from the activity in downtown.”
They will also assess the
area’s housing stock, which is varied,
Waldon said. Houses in the area range
from the three homes under construction
by Habitat for Humanity on Seventh
Street to homes built 100 years ago.
There are new and old rental houses,
mobile homes, new private homes and
dilapidated houses, some of them slated
for either substantial renovation or
demolition. “There is a rich mix of
diversity, and that’s part of what makes
it so interesting,” Waldon said.
He has talked with Bettie
Murchison, the director of the DuBois
Center, about its facilities, plans and
goals.
“It’s wonderful to have a
vibrant school there,” Waldon said.
He is hoping Ammons’ plans
will be one of the engines sparking
change in the neighborhood.
And, since he began the
study, Waldon said, he has begun to
think there may be a need to pull
together a retrospective or history of
the DuBois school and the entire
neighborhood.
Waldon said he and his team
did a similar study in a Chapel Hill
neighborhood that is very like the
northeast.
One thing he learned, he
said, is that when you get people
together to talk about the
infrastructure, jobs, recreation and
other items, “good things start to
happen among themselves and with the
city’s leadership.” The results, he
said, “are almost always very, very
positive.” |
