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There are two streets crossing the
proposed Holding Village south of the
N.C. 98 bypass: Franklin Street, a major
local thoroughfare aligned north and
south, and Friendship Chapel Road,
designated a collector street which will
soon pretty much stretch from South Main
Street on the west to Jones Dairy Road
on the east.
Holding Village developers –
Entrust Holdings and East-West Partners
– have discussed their plans for
Franklin Street in detail, including the
estimated $3 million cost to build the
street from the bypass to the section in
Heritage north of Rogers Road.
They have not mentioned
Friendship Chapel Road, although that is
about to change.
(The editor does have a
personal interest in Friendship Chapel
Road in that the home she and her
husband have owned for 37 years is on
the road at the corner of South Main
Street.)
Friendship Chapel Road has
some unique problems which can be traced
to its history.
It began as Front Street in
the 1840s when the village of
Forestville was booming. Front Street
led from Powell Road, called that
because Jesse Powell had first operated
a ferry and then built a bridge across
the Neuse. Powell Road is now South Main
Street (U.S. 1-A).
Front Street led to at least
one general store and the new Raleigh &
Gaston Railroad depot in the northwest
corner of the street and the tracks and
extended farther east to some homes and
farms.
Forestville withered as Wake
Forest grew in importance, particularly
after the railroad station was moved.
The name of Front Street was lost, and
the road remained a dirt track.
After W.W. Holding
consolidated several farms for a larger
dairy farm that stretched from the
railroad tracks east and south over
about 800 acres, the road was just a
farm lane that also served Friendship
Chapel Baptist Church.
There was no change until
the 1990s when the Town of Wake Forest
established its operations center across
from the church, a move that required
the installation of water and sewer. The
state paved the street.
This means there is
essentially a paved farm road on the
west with a railroad crossing.
Although there has been
discussion about closing the railroad
crossing when high-speed passenger rail
on that line becomes a reality, that may
not happen.
“The town’s position on the
rail crossing is to keep it open and
have it grade separated with the
high-speed rail project,” Planning
Director Chip Russell said. “As long as
the operations center remains in its
current location, the rail crossing
needs to remain open.”
The rail line now has only
freight traffic to and from businesses
north of Wake Forest. The rail line was
discontinued and torn up several years
ago between Norlina and Petersburg, Va.,
and will have to be rebuilt for
high-speed rail.
A collector street is a
two-lane street with either a center
turn lane where needed or on-street
parking.
After Friendship Chapel
passes the church and operations center
and enters the proposed Holding Village,
the street leaves its historic path and
will be built new.
It will come to a T
intersection near the western edge of
Holding Village, turn south to a
roundabout and then continue east
through the village center to Spring
Branch, where the developers will build
a bridge over the stream and the planned
greenway.
For the moment, the road
will go no farther because the Dameron
brothers, who own a large part of the
former Holding farm, are still planning
how to develop the tract. The land
between Spring Branch and Dunn Creek is
still wooded.
Between Dunn Creek and Jones
Dairy Road however, Friendship Chapel
Road as a collector street is close to
completion.
The right-of-way clearing is
complete, Andy Ammons, head of Ammons
Development, said this week.
The right-of-way goes across
the northern edge of Heritage North,
intersecting with Heritage Lake Road,
which is also on its way to completion.
Ammons said they will be
installing utilities and paving the road
in the next few weeks once the ground
dries out.
He is building Friendship
Chapel with a 70-foot right-of-way, 36
feet of pavement, curb, gutter and
sidewalks on both sides. For the time
being, Ammons’ group will pave the first
28 feet of pavement, two and a half
lanes, with the final half lane unpaved
until there are decisions about the
entrances to the planned shopping
center.
In the traffic study about
the impact of Holding Village done by
The Louis Berger Group for the town, one
of the recommendations was to realign
Friendship Chapel Road or Cimarron
Parkway across South Main Street to
meet.
The study also says – and
Russell has agreed – that it would not
be advisable to add a traffic signal
where Friendship Chapel meets South
Main, realigned or not. “It is unlikely
that it will receive many left turns
here due to high levels of congestion.”
The study does recommend adding left-and
right-turn lanes on Friendship Chapel at
South Main. |
