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Was it a park
or just a pond?
A 10-acre tract kept popping up last
Thursday night, first in a discussion about the town board’s agenda for Jan. 15
and then during the review of the plans for the Corporate Chaplains of
America’s future office building.
Planning board chairman Bob Hill
wondered if it was the same pond “acquired under questionable circumstances”
and someone else said former commissioners Richard Finke and Mack Turner had
named it J.L. Warren Park for the late J.L. Warren, who was an officer at CCB
bank, now SunTrust, for many years as well as being very active with Boy Scouts
and other community activities.
It was apparently given that name
officially because it used to appear on the list of town parks, but it was
never developed, never even accessible except through some shrubby woods.
The developer for the Cimarron
subdivision gave the land and pond to the town.
It was called Ruth Snyder’s pond for
years because she owned it along with the wooded area around it.
The five acres of land lies around the
pond with a leg that extends to the N.C. 98 bypass. The five-acre pond is
shaped like a pudgy L with the short leg toward the bypass (north).
Town Manager Mark Williams said there
were fears the earthen dam on the west side of the pond would break during
Hurricane Fran in 1996.
The agenda item asks the commissioners
to authorize the sale and upset bid for the park land. That is a method of
disposing of a public asset, Williams said.
“I didn’t realize we had decided we
were going to do this,” Commissioner Margaret Stinnett said.
“Didn’t we decide we were going to do
this?” Mayor Vivian Jones asked, and Commissioner Frank Drake shook his head
and said he was not disputing the decision. “I just don’t remember.”
The board met in closed session with
town attorney Eric Vernon at the close of the July board meeting to discuss the
possible sale.
The Corporate Chaplains of America
want to purchase the 10 acres behind their planned headquarters building. The
additional land would give the group the ability to build a second building: in
order to do so, they must have sufficient land to keep the impervious surface
area under 24 percent.
The land and pond would also provide a
park-like setting for the building.
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