Elon’s town council has decided not to reopen a controversial road connection between one of the town’s established subdivisions and a brand new development that’s under construction on an adjacent parcel in Gibsonville.
During a special-called meeting on Tuesday, the council unanimously agreed to continue its two-year-long “temporary” closure of Aspen Avenue – a dead-end street in Elon’s Ashley Woods subdivision that had been slated to extend into Gibsonville’s new Owen Park community in order to create one of the development’s entrances.
Officials in Elon had originally blocked off this proposed connection in 2022 after Matt Kirkpatrick, the Wake County developer behind Owen Park, began using this route to move logging equipment onto the development’s grounds. This move, which violated a driveway permit that Elon had issued, also provoked an outcry from residents in Ashley Woods, which is largely situated on Elon’s side of the municipal border with Gibsonville.
Kirkpatrick’s subsequent bids to reopen this passage led to further unrest among the homeowners in Ashley Woods. This clash of wills ultimately culminated in June, when dozens of Kirkpatrick’s reluctant neighbors poured into Elon’s town hall to demand that the town’s elected leaders prevent the developer from consummating his plans to link Aspen Avenue with Owen Park’s road network.
The council, for its part, held off on any final decision during last month’s tumultuous meeting, which had overwhelmed the seating capacity of its modestly-sized meeting chambers. Its members nevertheless agreed to reconvene on July 16 in order to settle the off-and-on grudge match over Aspen Avenue’s fate.
[Story continues below photo.]
In lieu of its usual meeting chambers, the council held Tuesday’s special-called meeting in the auditorium of Elon Community Church, which happens to be pastored by town councilman Randy Orwig. These comparatively spacious quarters easily accommodated the meeting’s 40 or so audience members, while leaving vast expanses of space for the council’s own deliberations to reverberate.
The council ultimately spent 20 minutes or so weighing its options that evening before its members resolved to indefinitely extend their “temporary” closure of the Aspen Avenue connection.
The council opted to continue the temporary closure over three other potential courses of action – the first being a permanent closure of the Aspen Avenue connection. Also on the table that evening was temporary closure that would automatically end when Owen Park’s development reached a certain, preordained threshold. This measure had been proposed to discourage the connection’s use by construction vehicles while allowing it to serve as an outlet for Oak Park’s residents once the subdivision is finished.
In the meantime, Kirkpatrick had sent the town’s leaders a fourth potential option that would’ve reopened the Aspen Avenue connection in exchange for a commitment to redirect construction traffic through Owen Park’s other entrances. Kirkpatrick also pledged to develop bike lanes, crosswalks, and a traffic island along Brookview Drive, which crosses Aspen Avenue near the proposed connection.
In explaining these various options to the council, Elon’s town manager Richard Roedner stressed that, under state law, the temporary closure which the council eventually approved would need to be predicated on concerns about traffic safety.
“At some point in the future,” he added, “you may find that traffic concerns are no longer an issue, and the road can be reopened.”
In the meantime, councilmember Stephanie Bourland, who is herself a resident of the Ashley Woods subdivision, shared some comparative data from the town’s police department, which had set up traffic cameras within Ashley Woods to monitor speeding violations.
Bourland observed that the department’s cameras had identified 842 speeders among the 5,744 vehicles they observed along Aspen Avenue and Brookview Drive in 2023.
“One year later, there’s almost 1000 more vehicles and double the number of speeders,” Bourland added in an attempt to provide some factual basis to the council’s “traffic safety concerns.”
A fifth option that the council had previously considered for Aspen Avenue called for the connection’s closure to vehicle traffic while permitting Kirkpatrick to develop pathways for cyclists and pedestrians. During Tuesday’s meeting, Elon’s mayor Emily Sharpe pointed out that this option is more or less untenable due to uncertainty about what Kirkpatrick does on his side of the Elon-Gibsonville border.
“We can say that is the intention,” she added, “but ultimately the plans on the other side can change.”
In the meantime, Elon’s attorney Bob Hagemann observed a traffic safety-inspired temporary closure would allow pedestrian and bicycle access even without the construction of the accompanying infrastructure at the developer’s expense.
In the end, councilman Michael Woods made a motion to proceed with the temporary road closure, which Bourland readily seconded. The motion went on to pass in a 5-to-0 vote.
