June 6, 2007

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            “I would like to ask for a stay until the jurisdictional discrepancies are resolved and until the erosion problem is solved,” Proctor said as she handed out photographs of her and her neighbors’ backyards on the north side of Wait Avenue. Their lots back up to the reservoir tract.

            “Forty acres has been denuded and left that way for at least four years,” Proctor said. Silt and muddy water flow from that site onto the neighboring properties.

            “You cannot let that much land go that long without reseeding it,” Proctor said. “Folks, you just need to do something.”

            Proctor was echoed by another neighbor, Pam Grubbs, who said she had turned to every agency and gone through every channel she could think of to find a solution. “I cannot even mow my grass on the hill.”

            The problem, Director of Engineering Eric Keravuori said, is the borrow pit on the Ammons property that the state Department of Transportation used for the fill to build the N.C. 98 bypass. At that time Wake County had control of sedimentation and soil erosion in the town, but, Keravuori said, they did not have jurisdiction at that site because it was controlled by the state and the same situation applies to the town now that it has its own sedimentation and soil erosion program. DOT was supposed to close the site down, reseed and replant.

            “There was a reclamation plan. The state signed off on it,” Andy Ammons said. He disagreed with Proctor about a stream she said was not shown on a 1974 topographic map. The state Division of Water Quality identified the stream, he said, and “all the topos show a creek going there.”

            Ammons said his plans call for a buffer and a pocket park along that stream. Keravuori has said his planned storm management plan will work. “We plan to do the right thing.”

            “It can be fixed and it will be,” Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said. “We are in the process of finding out” who is responsible.

            The vote to approve, on a motion by Peter Thibodeau, was unanimous.

            The rezoning, if approved by the town board June 19, would reduce the overall density, Ammons told Commissioner Frank Drake.

            The Ammons family – brothers Andy, David and Jeff and their sister, Alma Hoffman – own the land and will develop it. One of the first plans was for a conservation subdivision, since abandoned, and the current plan appears to be for a variety of housing, offices, retail, and a complex similar to Springmoor in Raleigh, which their father, Judd Ammons, built and David runs.

            Planner Chad Sary said the rezoning was to prepare for a plan that would reach the planning board very soon. Andy Ammons said the goal for the rezoning was to allow for “seven or eight different product types and accommodate folks at different steps of life,” and referred to an “adult center.”

            Ammons also said he had sent out letters to neighbors at the same time the town sent out notices about the requested rezoning and had spoken to six or seven people who called him about their concerns. “We’ll have the problems nailed down in the master plan, the site plan process.”