Do the developer’s plans for a mixed-use development in the 100 and 200 blocks between West Washington and West Holt streets emulate a plan the city itself had proposed?
Much of the discussion at the planning board meeting Monday night focused on a 2018 “downtown vision plan” that had been developed by some consultants the city of Mebane hired to consider various improvements to the downtown area for its long-term future.
On one of the pages from that report, an excerpt of which was shown in the materials from the developer and cited by proponents and opponents of the apartment project, two buildings are shown in the 200 block of West Washington Street, the block that includes the historic “cotton building,” one of the oldest portions of the former Kingsdown mattress factory complex, which originally straddled South Third Street.
But one observer noted that the 2018 plan showed two buildings along West Washington Street in the 200 block, with all parking behind them, facing Holt Street.
Instead, the developer’s plan calls for four buildings on the site, where one is now and where two were shown in the 2018 conceptual drawing.
According to the vision plan, 35,500 square feet of new commercial and 51,000 square feet of new residential – described as either “condos or apartments” – were shown in 2018.
NOW (2022 MIXED-USE PROPOSAL WITH 268 APTS.):
THEN (2018 “VISION” PLAN OF POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT):
The Alamance News was unable to decipher the proposed square footage of the residential components of either the 100 block (with two buildings) or the 200 block (which now has four) in the developer’s plan.
The developer described the commercial section as being 21,450 in two buildings that front on West Washington Street – one in the 100 block and a second (beside the so-called “cotton building”) in the 200 block.
