Mebane’s city council has formally annexed most of the land that a Greensboro-based firm has assembled for a massive, mixed-used development off of Trollinger-Hawfields Road.
During its latest regularly scheduled meeting last week, the council unanimously voted to take in some 87.7 acres of property that the Koury Corporation of Greensboro ultimately intends to develop as it proceeds with this project. This area includes nearly all of the 83 acres that the council agreed to rezone in December in order to facilitate the company’s plans for 645 apartments, 38 townhomes, and a shopping center whose footprint would cover close to 6300,000 square feet.
Explicitly excluded from last week’s annexation is 1.67 acres of land that Alamance County currently owns along South Third Street. This property, which the county originally purchased for a proposed EMS base, was included in the Koury Corporation’s rezoning request where it was envisioned to serve as the entrance to a secondary access road for the project’s residential component.
The city council ultimately agreed to rezone this county-owned land after receiving the developer’s assurances that it had the property under contract after it was able to line up another site for the county’s EMS base off of NC 119. It subsequently emerged that the Koury Corporation had gotten ahead of its skis. As The Alamance News revealed shortly after the rezoning vote in December, the company didn’t actually have the county’s land under contract. Nor had it firmed up the purchase of the alternate EMS site that it needed to convince the county to part with its property on South Third Street.
Mebane’s city attorney Lawson Brown confirmed that the unresolved status of this 1.67-acre lot had resulted in its exclusion from the property that the Koury Corporation had proposed for inclusion in the city’s municipal limits.
“It is my understanding,” Lawson informed the city council during last week’s proceedings, “that the applicants will have to come back if the swap occurs and ask if the property which the county owns can be annexed at that time.”
At the moment, the county still holds the title and deed to this 1.67-acre parcel – as confirmed by the county’s own land records. This state of affairs has kept the Koury Corporation from breaking ground on the proposed road entrance even as it forges ahead with other parts of the project.
[Story continues below graphic of the mixed-use development, with county-owned land highlighted.]
The company’s plans for this property nevertheless received a bit of a boost last month when the county’s board of commissioners signed off on the elusive land swap with the developer. The commissioners approved this agreement on the condition that the Koury Corporation makes some improvements to prepare the 2.58 acres it had offered up at the intersection of NC 119 and Smith Drive in exchange for the South Third Street parcel.
Among the stipulations of last month’s land swap are that the company will build an entrance to the now-vacant property, do a measure of clearing and grading, and install a 50-foot culvert. The agreement also requires the Koury Corporation to “ensure the property is suitable and appropriately zoned for use as an EMS station, as confirmed by the City of Mebane.”
During a public hearing that preceded last week’s annexation vote, Tom Boney, Jr., the publisher of The Alamance News, informed the council about the land swap requirements to underscore the still-tentative status of the 1.67 acres along South Third Street.
“This has been hanging around since December,” the newspaper’s publisher reminded the council, “when it was portrayed that the county had agreed to this whole thing when in fact it had not.”
Boney went on to inquire if the Koury Corporation had taken any action to comply with the land swap’s proviso about zoning, which Brian Baker, one of the county’s assistant manager, had specifically told the commissioners would be handled by the Greensboro-based company. Ashely Owenbey, the city’s development director, saw no particular need for this requirement to even be in the land swap.
“We have not received any applications for rezoning that site on NC 119 and Smith Drive,” she told the newspaper’s publisher. “That site is already zoned to support an EMS station so a rezoning would not be necessary.”
Owenbey added that the land off of 119 would ultimately have to be annexed so that the county’s proposed EMS station can connect to city utilities. She acknowledged that the city has yet to receive an annexation request for this property. There is no mention of annexation, however, within the terms of the land swap agreement.
In the end, Mebane’s city council voted 6-to-0 to approve the company’s annexation request with the explicit exclusion of the county-owned 1.67 acres on South Third Street.
