April 18, 2007

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            The committee did not discuss the letter from Dale and Mary Wiggins, who have a small horse farm just south of Bishop’s Grant and The Landings and are unhappy that Contentnea Creek, the developer, has said it will not continue the 100-foot buffer separating their property from Bishop’s Grant.

            When Bishop’s Grant was being planned in 2004, the neighbors and Contentnea Creek reached a 10-point signed agreement which specified a 100-foot natural and undisturbed buffer between the Wiggins land and the townhouses in the development.

            In his letter, Wiggins said, “I’ve been told by the developer’s vice president, Jonna Birtcher, there could be no consideration towards my request as it would hinder the profitability of the project.”

            There has been at least one neighborhood meeting which left some neighbors unsatisfied, and LaMarr Bunn, the landscape architect, said there would be another meeting this week.

            Commissioner Frank Drake did ask Bunn why the buffer between the single-family homes and the large lots to the south thin down to 50 feet, and Bunn said they would lose about 10 lots if they increased the buffer size.

            The committee did discuss an additional access. Bishop’s Grant, which is essentially a large flag lot with a narrow extension to connect it to Wait Avenue (N.C. 98), has only the one exit. There are stub-outs to adjacent properties which have not agreed to provide right-of-way for a street.

            “We will be doing a traffic study,” Planning Director Chip Russell said. “From a staff perspective, we probably need another way out to the north.”

            The plan shows two stub-outs at the northern property line. One of those, Bunn said, will line up with a street in another future development to the north and the second will connect to Copperbeech Road, a dirt road that is a public right-of-way and provided Stephen Price with access to his house on the property. Price, Bunn and Birtcher said, had timbered the 34 acres before he sold it.

            Copperbeech Road extends to Oak Grove Church Road, Drake called “the back of beyond.”

            “You’d be surprised,” Russell said. “That’s going to change drastically in the next five years” as some other developments take shape.

            Bunn was only asking for 40 building permits (water tap-ons) per year, the town standard, and said they would be adding some water conservation measures to the proposal before it reaches the planning board.

            Two young Wake Forest couples – Angie and Kyle Sutherland and Beth and Robert Nance – are Bark Development, and are planning the townhouses that will sell for between $120,000 and $140,000.

            “There’s not much of that housing stock in town anymore,” CPC chairman and Commissioner David Camacho said, and later he, Drake and planning board member Kim Parker admired the layout of the 1,300-square-foot and larger homes.

            “There is nothing in the community for under $13,000,” Beth Nance said. The four, who have been friends for a long time, own and are developing duplexes on Taylor and Perry streets also. They will call the townhouses Old Chestnut Townes and want to design them to fit the town’s Renaissance Plan. They will market them to seminary families, young professionals and young families.

            Engineer Mike Crowley of Crowley & Associates said the townhouses would provide a transition between the high-end homes planned to the north in Trillium subdivision and the rental housing to the south.

            Crowley described the combination of retention pond-well water the project will use for irrigation. He said he has installed it at a hotel in Chapel Hill and two projects on Purnell Road.

            Crowley agreed there would be a neighborhood meeting – probably two – after the plans are more developed and well before the public hearing before the planning and town boards.