Burlington’s city council has ratified some minor revisions to a proposed apartment complex along St. Mark’s Church Road that its members had originally approved with much fanfare more than three years ago.
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This 211-unit development at 1408 St. Mark’s Church was initially okayed by the council on a slightly reduced scale in the spring of 2021. At the time, this project had stirred some excitement among city officials as the first so-called “planned development” to clear the city’s regulatory hurdles since this designation was introduced as part of Burlington’s unified development ordinance in 2019.
A successor to what the city had previously billed as “conditional zoning,” this development tool allows land owners to propose projects that deviate from certain development standards but offer various concessions that city officials judge to be in the community’s best interest. In this case, the planned development model had enabled an out-of-town developer to propose 205 rental apartments on a parcel that had presented several obstacles to such an endeavor.
In order to make the most of this site, the project’s originally developer had sought to diverge from Burlington’s prevailing standards for things like building height and street setbacks. He nevertheless appeased city officials with lavish landscaping enhancements, on-site traffic improvements, and greenways that would’ve led to nearby shopping centers as well as Burlington’s Joe Davidson Park.
The members of Burlington’s city council were so smitten with these proposed concessions that they openly expressed their regret when the original developer abandoned the project after clearing the 6.5-acre site. The situation was salvaged earlier this year when Charlotte-based developer David Ransenberg decided to revive the project after making a few modifications to the plans which the council had previously approved.
Jamie Lawson, Burlington’s director of planning and development services, ultimately presented these tweaks to the council ahead of a state-mandated public hearing on Tuesday. Lawson stressed that the main difference between the two sets of plans was the overall unit count – which had increased from 205 to 211 apartments in Ransenberg’s iteration of the development.
“There is no change to the existing footprint,” the city’s planning director went on to point out. “The applicant has requested to add six additional units to the original development…He has also added an additional fire lane that was required by the fire department and some sustainability incentives that our ordinance allows for.”
The council went on to vote 5-to-0 to approve the new plans for the project.
