A Gibsonville developer’s plans have been sent back to the drawing board after the town’s board of aldermen narrowly turned down his request to increase a future townhome development from 55 to 81 units.
After hearing concerns during a March 1 public hearing and public comments this week from several residents of the nearby Sullivan Court neighborhood, aldermen Shannon O’Toole, Yvonne Maizland, and Ken Pleasants opposed a motion by alderman Clarence Owen to allow the 81 townhomes, conditional on the developer building a six-foot privacy fence. Mayor pro tem Mark Shepherd, who seconded the motion, gave his approval alongside Owen.
Though the agenda item’s public hearing was held earlier this month, three Sullivan Court residents made their final pitches to the board to turn down the request by developer Joe Kupiec, of CDI Builders, to amend his 55-unit site plan that the board approved in 2018.
Among some of the homeowners’ closing concerns were the sheer increase in the proposed number of units, loss of privacy due to Kupiec’s plans for two-story dwellings, increased traffic, and that the developer had waited years to come back with an amended site plan, let alone build.
For his part, Kupiec assured that a six-foot privacy fence between the townhomes and existing homes would be built. Referring to the residents’ criticism of his desired number of units, he claimed that he could have proposed 128 apartments under the conditional use zoning that the town’s board approved in August 2018 by a 4-1 vote; alderman Ken Pleasants was opposed. During that meeting two-and-a-half years ago, Kupiec told the board of aldermen that he was looking to build 55 one-story or one-and-a-half story townhomes.
Upon seeing the developer’s request turned down by the board, Mayor Lenny Williams told the developer to eventually return with a different proposal.
