After five months, multiple planning board meetings, and two city council public hearings, the members of Burlington’s city council have given their unanimous blessing to a contentious rezoning request near Garden Road’s juncture with Boone Station Drive.
During a regularly-scheduled meeting on Tuesday, the council voted 4-to-0 in favor of this proposed zoning change, which property manager David Morton has submitted in order to erect a cluster of senior-oriented apartments on this 2.8-acre tract near one of the entrances to Alamance Crossing.
The council ultimately rendered this verdict over the objections from the residents of Fairview Estates, a decades-old subdivision that lies to the southwest of the project’s proposed site.
Since Morton debuted his request in October, this neighborhood’s residents have mounted a persistent and well-organized campaign against the prospective adjustment in land use. Their opposition did much to drag out the city’s review of Morton’s proposal – and ultimately persuaded the property manager to jettison dozens of potential uses from his original application.
Morton’s efforts to whittle down his plans ultimately did little to placate his critics, who were on hand Tuesday night to make their fateful last stand against his proposal. Yet, in the final analysis, the council determined that Morton’s plans are about as good as anything the city is likely to see on this site.
“It was a tough decision from beginning to end. What made this situation so much more complicated is that there’s this one piece of property that nothing was done with for years…You have development all around it. The traffic on that road is substantial. . . and, it was inevitable that something was going to occur there at some point in time.” – Burlington mayor pro tem Harold Owen
“It was a tough decision from beginning to end,” Harold Owen, Burlington’s mayor pro tem, acknowledged before Tuesday’s vote. “What made this situation so much more complicated is that there’s this one piece of property that nothing was done with for years…You have development all around it. The traffic on that road is substantial…and, it was inevitable that something was going to occur there at some point in time.”
The rezoning request which the council okayed on Tuesday had been submitted to the city’s planning department as a “limited use” variant of general business development. Burlington’s unified development ordinance offers developers this limited-use option so they narrow down their preferred uses from the wide swathe of possibilities allowed in a particular development zone.
Originally, Morton included 67 of the 119 activities which are permitted by right in a general business district in the request he submitted to Burlington’s planning department. Pressure from neighbors and city officials prompted Morton to whittle this list down until he was left with a handful of options that he presented to the city’s planning and zoning commission in December. His efforts were enough to secure an endorsement from the city’s planning staff, although they failed to win over the neighbors or the planning commission, which recommend against the request.
In the wake of the planning commission’s rejection of his proposal, Morton appeared before Burlington’s city council in January with a single prospective use – this being a multifamily housing development. Amid continued pushback from residents, the council decided to remand the request back to the planning commission, which endorsed the single-use proposal last month in a 4-to-1 vote.
When Morton’s request returned to the council on Tuesday, Ryan Moffitt, an attorney with the Vernon Law Firm, emphasized the various concessions that his client had made since he first filed his proposal. Moffitt also reminded the city’s leaders that they have traditionally encouraged multifamily housing as a buffer between commercial developments like Alamance Crossing and single-family subdivisions such as neighboring Fairview Estates. He went on to offer a quick overview of the rental apartments which his client hopes to develop in this particular “transitional” zone.
“It will be age targeted – 55-plus,” the attorney explained; “a 54-unit, single building with full access off of Garden Road.”
Moffitt’s description of this project nevertheless fell flat with the five residents who addressed the council from Fairview Estates. These speakers included Chad Mills, who insisted that any development that’s built on this site should have a density similar to the subdivision where he resides.
“We are not against development. We just desire that the development remain consistent with our neighborhood, which was established 65 years ago.”
– Fairview Estates resident Chad Mills
“We are not against development,” Mills assured the council. “We just desire that the development remain consistent with our neighborhood, which was established 65 years ago.”
Mills also objected to the lack of hard-fast commitments in Morton’s rezoning request – and even more to the point, he yearned for a detailed site plan that lays out the project’s particulars.
“The residents of Fairview Estates feel that more can be done concerning transparency,” he added. “We have seen nothing on paper. No binding documents; nothing but promises and pinkie swears.”
Charles Bostek, a fellow resident of Fairview Estates, observed that, in theory, Morton’s proposed zoning change would increase the total capacity of his 2.8-acre site from 14 to 68 dwelling units. He went on to declare this figure widely out of step with his own neighborhood.
“I have asked multiple times why they don’t build something that is already allowed under the current zoning,” Bostek continued. “The only answer I’ve heard is that there is not enough money to be made.”
The council also heard from Luis Perez and his son Lucas – the latter having complaints about the developer’s alleged insensitivity to the neighboring homeowners.
“No consideration was given to what’s most consistent with our neighborhood. I believe I can say that we are more opposed to this project now than we were in October when all this began, and the fact that we are unified in our opposition really speaks to the way that this has been handled.”
– Lucas Perez
“No consideration was given to what’s most consistent with our neighborhood,” Lucas Perez declared. “I believe I can say that we are more opposed to this project now than we were in October when all this began, and the fact that we are unified in our opposition really speaks to the way that this has been handled.”
Meanwhile, Angela Bostek presented the council with some photos and maps to show the development’s potential impact on things like traffic volumes.
“We are not built to accommodate that amount of traffic.”
– Angela Bostek
“We are not built to accommodate that amount of traffic,” she went on to assert.
In response to the neighborhood’s oft-stated desire for a site plan, mayor Jim Butler called on the city’s planning director, Jamie Lawson, to explain why this sort of site-specific layout isn’t part of Morton’s proposal.
“This is a limited use rezoning request. In this type of application, a site plan is not required . . . The applicant cannot state any commitments. Nor can the planning and zoning commission or city council impose any added conditions.”
– Burlington planning director Jamie Lawson
“This is a limited use rezoning request,” the city’s planning director elaborated. “In this type of application, a site plan is not required… The applicant cannot state any commitments. Nor can the planning and zoning commission or city council impose any added conditions.”
Lawson added that the city’s unified development ordinance contains various regulations that will ultimately constrain the layout and appearance of the proposed apartments. She proceeded to touch on the various rules that appear in this ordinance.
“[It] has a number of design standards specifically related to that use type,” she added. “There are standards that deal with parking, with the aesthetics of the buildings, lighting, landscaping, buffering.”
Lawson stressed that the project will ultimately be vetted by a staff-level technical review committee. The fact that this committee also includes a representative from the state’s transportation department was not lost on councilmember Dejuana Bigelow as she reflected on Moffitt’s assurances about a single entrance off Garden Road.
“It is not set in stone that there will be only one entrance,” Bigelow pointed out. “They will determine what is right and safe.”
Meanwhile, Butler himself made the case that, even without a specific site plan, he and his colleagues can rest easy about what will appear on this property.
“We can’t guarantee that they’ll be high end or senior oriented apartments. But we can guarantee that the UDO will put restrictions on a lot of things that some of the commercial and multifamily developments in the vicinity were not restricted by [as they predated the unified development ordinance].
“We don’t have a site plan. But that is not what this is about. We know what is going there, and it will be multifamily housing.”
– Burlington mayor Jim Butler
“We can’t guarantee that they’ll be high end or senior oriented apartments,” the mayor argued. “But we can guarantee that the UDO will put restrictions on a lot of things that some of the commercial and multifamily developments in the vicinity were not restricted by [as they predated the unified development ordinance].
“We don’t have a site plan,” Butler went on to admit before the council’s 4-to-0 decision. “But that is not what this is about. We know what is going there, and it will be multifamily housing.”
Omitted from this unanimous vote was councilman Bob Ward, who was absent from Tuesday night’s meeting.
