Elon’s town council has resolved to annex a tract at the northwest corner of University Drive and Shallowford Church Road where a Wake County company has previously received the town’s blessing to build a 400-home, mixed-use subdivision.
The council voted to absorb this 57.72-acre parcel into the town’s municipal limits on Tuesday, enabling Raleigh’s Greenhawk Corporation to press ahead with its plans for this new cluster development.
Dubbed Parc Northwest, this project had been the source of much handwringing for the town’s leaders last year as they wrestled with the particulars of a rezoning request that Greenhawk had filed with Elon’s planning department.
After a series of boisterous meetings over the summer, which drew capacity crowds from among the development’s reluctant neighbors, the council signed off on a heavily-revised version of the company’s zoning request. This approved designation allows Greenhawk to fill the now-vacant property with 200 single-family homes, roughly the same number of rental apartments, and another 100,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor of the proposed apartment buildings.
Lori Oakley, the town’s planning director, informed the council that the parcel’s annexation will permit Greenhawk to proceed with its plans as they are spelled out in the project’s approved zoning.
“This property was approved in a conditional zoning request back in August,” Oakley recalled as she presented the annexation proposal on Tuesday, “and they are currently going through the major development process…but, of course, all that is contingent on annexation.”
In contrast to the popular upheaval that this project originally triggered, the council heard nary a peep from the community on Tuesday when it held a state-mandated public hearing on Greenhawk’s annexation request. Its members went on to approve the request by a margin of 4-to-0. Absent from the vote was council member Stephanie Bourland, who missed Tuesday’s meeting for health reasons.
