Burlington’s municipal leaders have often warned residents that, in the absence of anything legally binding, it’s wise to take what a developer says about a particular project with a grain of salt.
This object lesson in the vicissitudes of development has recently been pressed home to the residents of Fairview Acres, a decades-old subdivision that’s tucked into the fast-growing area near Garden Road’s juncture with Boone Station Drive.
About a year-and-a-half ago, this neighborhood’s homeowners mounted a well-organized campaign against an apartment complex that local developer David Morton had proposed near one of the entrances to the Alamance Crossing shopping center.
In order to proceed with his plans, Morton had asked the city of Burlington to rezone the 4 vacant lots that he hoped to develop from medium density residential to a “limited” form of general businesses use. Morton’s request had initially larded his request with 67 of the 119 activities that are ordinarily allowed in a general business zone. Along the way, pushback from neighbors compelled him to pare that number down to the single proposed use of multifamily dwellings.
Burlington’s city council went on to approve this singular use in March of 2025. The council left it to a staff-level technical review committee to hammer out the particulars of the proposed apartments. Even so, Ryan Moffitt, an attorney in Morton’s employ, had offered a whole host of details about his client’s project when it came up for a hearing before the city council that month.
“It will be age targeted – 55-plus, a 54-unit, single building with full access off of Garden Road.”
– Attorney Ryan Moffitt in March 2025
“It will be age targeted – 55-plus,” Moffitt declared before the council’s 4-to-0 decision; “a 54-unit, single building with full access off of Garden Road.”
Moffitt had also insisted that there were no plans to access the site from Westview Terrace – a dead-end road within Fairview Estates that had been one of key areas of concern for the neighborhood’s residents.
Although technically not part of the council’s decision, the attorney’s pronouncements were apparently taken to heart by neighbors like Charles Bostek, who had been one of the project’s most vocal detractors before the council’s decision.
“We lost [in opposing the rezoning altogether in march 2025] but gained some commitments from the owner. There was not going to be an entrance on our neighborhood street (Westview Terrace); there were only going to be 54 units for seniors; and they were going to have a full movement entrance on Garden Road.”
– Westview Terrace resident Charles Bostek
In a recent message to The Alamance News, Bostek recalled that he and his neighbors had found some consolation in Moffitt’s assertions even though they were unable to convince the council to vote down the rezoning request.
“We lost but gained some commitments from the owner,” Bostek recalled in an email to the newspaper on Monday. “There was not going to be an entrance on our neighborhood street (Westview Terrace); there were only going to be 54 units for seniors; and they were going to have a full movement entrance on Garden Road.”
Bostek added that his own expectations were recently thrown for a loop when a representative of the Signature Property Group stopped by his home to share a detailed site plan for the apartments.
This site plan, which was submitted to the city’s planning department on July 31, envisions 66 dwelling units within two three-story buildings as well as entrances off of both Garden Road and Westview Terrace.
This departure from the attorney’s earlier description has smacked of utter “injustice” to Bostek.
And yet, it’s entirely consistent with the approved zoning, as Burlington’s planning director Jamie Lawson had tried to emphasize prior to the council’s decision.
“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.
“. . .It is not set in stone that there will be only one entrance [for instance, she said in 2025]. But [the technical review committee’s members] will determine what is right and safe.”
– Burlington planning director Jamie Lawson in March 2025
“This is a limited use rezoning request,” Lawson declared during last year’s public hearing. “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.”
At this point, the developer’s site plan has yet to receive a thumbs up from the city’s technical review committee, which includes representatives from various municipal departments as well as outside agencies like the NC Transportation Department.
Among the considerations that this committee will ultimately have to confront is whether the developer’s site plan conforms to the multifamily housing standards that appear in Burlington’s unified development ordinance.
The fact that the project would have to comply with these rules proved a point worth highlighting to Burlington’s then-mayor Jim Butler.
“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 [were never regulated in] some of the [older] commercial and multifamily developments in the vicinity.”
– Then-Burlington mayor Jim Butler (in 2025 when council approved the rezoning)
“We can’t guarantee that they’ll be high end or senior oriented apartments,” Butler said before he joined the 4-to-0 decision, which also included then-councilmen Ronnie Wall and Harold Owen as well as current council member Dejuana Bigelow (Councilman Bob Ward, who is now the city’s mayor pro tem, was absent from that evening’s vote). “But we can guarantee that the UDO will put restrictions on a lot of things that [were never regulated in] some of the [older] commercial and multifamily developments in the vicinity.”
The staff-level committee’s input was, likewise, crucial to Bigelow.
“It is not set in stone that there will be only one entrance,” she pointed out before the vote in 2025. “But [the committee’s members] will determine what is right and safe.”
