Burlington’s city council didn’t take a bye on every rezoning request that came up for its consideration last Tuesday.
In fact, its members bestowed their immediate approval on one matter that was arguably the most complex of the three zoning-related issues which they took up that evening.
This particular proposal actually appeared on the council’s agenda as three separate items due to the subject property’s location on either side of the Guilford-Alamance county line.
Over the past 20 years, this border land has become home to a growing number of residential projects – the largest of which is Mackintosh on the Lake, which also boasts the distinction of being the biggest residential development in Burlington. Beyond Mackintosh’s northwestern edge is a smattering of more widely-spaced homes within Guilford County’s domain. A number of these dwellings lie along Inglewood Road – a dead-end street beyond the reach of Burlington’s public utilities, where many homeowners currently rely on a community septic system and well.
Nestled between these two nodes is a 15.6-acre tract where developer Shawn Cummings hopes to construct a collection of one-story patio homes for the community’s burgeoning population of empty nesters. It was Cummings’ plan for this parcel that had ultimately inspired the three interrelated items on Tuesday’s meeting agenda.
Two of these items were requests for medium density residential zoning – one for each side of the Guilford-Alamance county divide, which slices through Cum-mings’ 15.6-acre tract. The third item concerned the entire site’s annexation, which is a prerequisite for the provision of city water and sewer to the proposed development.
During his appearance before Burlington’s city council last Tuesday, Cummings assured the city’s leaders that his plans are tailor-made for the inter-jurisdictional property he hopes to develop.
“We want to do our best to fit into the neighborhood,” he explained. “So, what we decided to go with a product – an active adult product – which is a single-story patio home.”
Cummings went on to acknowledge that he plans to market these residences at price points ranging from $550,000 to $600,000.
In his pursuit of this project, Cummings had recruited two former members of Burlington’s municipal staff to help him with the technical details. Nolan Kirkman, a now-retired assistant city manager, accompanied Cummings to Tuesday’s city council meeting – albeit in a largely non-speaking role. Meanwhile, Todd Lambert, Burlington’s one-time city engineer, took the lead in presenting his client’s plans when they came up before the city’s decision makers that evening.
During his presentation to the council, Lambert portrayed Cum-mings plans’ for his 15.6-acre tract as a balance between the relatively dense development in Mackintosh on the Lake and the more dispersed configuration along Inglewood Road. Lambert observed that the nearest section of Mackintosh contains lots that have a minimum lot area of 5,000 square feet.
“All of those on Inglewood are 30,000 square foot lots,” he added. “Medium density is 9,000 square feet…So, that gives you a transition zone between the high density of Mackintosh and the low density in Guilford.”
Lambert added that his client’s request for medium density residential zoning will be a vast improvement over the property’s currently irreconcilable designations. He pointed out that, on its Alamance County side, the property had been zoned for medium industrial use. Meanwhile, the portion in Guilford was a grab bag of residential designations with a wide range of densities.
Lambert went on to address the issue of road access for Cummings’ proposed development. The former city engineer said that the most straightforward way to achieve this connection would be to extend Inglewood Road beyond its current dead end. Jamie Lawson, the city’s planning director, had pointed out that another developer had inserted a “stub” at this terminus in expectation that someone would one day add on to the road.
Lambert assured the council that the existing stretch of Inglewood Road is capable of supporting the additional traffic that this proposed extension would bring. He said that, in theory, his client’s rezoning requests would allow up to 75 homes to be built on the project’s proposed site. He added that, in reality, the site’s carrying capacity will closer to 45 to 50 units. Even so, Lambert insisted that these hypothetical 75 dwellings would “utilize about 11 percent of the capacity of Inglewood [Road].”
“So we feel certain that traffic is not an issue as far as capacity goes on these streets,” he said.
Lambert conceded that the proposed extension of Inglewood Road was quite the tinderbox when he held a neighborhood meeting prior to Tuesday’s proceedings.
“We had about 30 in attendance,” he went on to recall. “Some people who came up didn’t want anything to happen on this property and I did nothing to change their minds by the end of the evening. Most residents, though, were concerned about what the development would look like, how it would affect their property, how it would affect Inglewood [Road], and could we access the property from somewhere else and not come through Inglewood [Road].”
Later that evening, the council heard directly from three residents along Inglewood Road who have some lingering concerns about Cummings’ plans.
Mary Kitts, who attended the meeting with her husband Alan, identified herself as one of the die-hards who remains opposed to the project despite Lambert’s diplomatic offensive. Kitts added that much of her own concerns stems from the central role that Inglewood Road has in the proposed development.
“We understand the need for development,” Kitts went on to assure the council. “However…what you’re proposing is putting 50 to 75 houses on the end of that road and all of the cars from those houses will go down Inglewood Road.”
Kitts’ misgivings were echoed by her next-door neighbor Stephanie Bell.
“It’s going to bring the city traffic,” she went on to lament before she appealed to the council for “safety precautions” to curb any would-be speed demons.
Lambert, for his part, promised the project’s detractors that the provisions in Burlington’s unified development ordinance will do a great deal to address their concerns. Meanwhile, Burlington’s mayor Jim Butler was already a few steps ahead of the former city engineer in his assessment of the proposed development.
“Two parcels of land, one project, and two counties,” the mayor said even before Lambert had commenced with his pitch to the council. “The [city] staff feels it’s a logical extension of what’s there and it [also] looks that way to me.”
The council went on to vote 5-to-0 in favor of both rezoning requests as well as the accompanying annexation proposal.
