Burlington’s planning and zoning commission has postponed its decision on a controversial rezoning request that seeks a wide range of commercial uses on 2.9 acres of vacant land near the rear entrance to the Alamance Crossing shopping center.
Located at the southeast corner of Garden Road and Boone Station Drive, this property consists of four residentially-zoned parcels that Stanley Smith of Whitsett acquired more than two decades ago. Smith has asked the city to redesignate these lots with a limited form of general business zoning that includes a large chunk of the 119 uses ordinarily permitted in a general business district.
Chad Huffine, a civil engineer in the property owner’s employ, informed the city’s planning commission that Smith originally approached his firm “18 or 19 years ago to look into doing something with this property.”
“Recently,” he added during the planning commission’s latest monthly meeting on Monday, “we’ve been asked by another local businessman who is working on a transaction to bring the rezoning case to the city.”
Huffine didn’t go on to name the “businessman” who has been the catalyst for this rezoning request, although several neighbors hostile to the request identified him as commercial landlord David Morton.
The rezoning request that Huffine initially submitted on the property owner’s behalf sought to allow any of 67 potential uses that the city allows in a general business district. Some of these activities nevertheless raised the eyebrows of Burlington’s planning staff, which asked the property owner to strike 16 of the requested items due to their incompatibility with a nearby residential neighborhood.
Among the planning staff’s suggested excisions were auto sales, check cashing, a convenience store with gas sales, a hotel or motel, a restaurant with a drive-thru, a commercial laundry, a self-storage facility, and light manufacturing.
During his appearance before the planning commission, Huffine acknowledged that his client has identified some redlined uses he’d be willing “to remove wholesale” and others he’d like to discuss with the commission’s members.
Before the planning commission delved into this item, Huffine told the group’s members that his client wanted to omit one of the five parcels he had submitted for rezoning.
Huffine went on to request the redaction of a .37-acre lot that had been the easternmost of the tracts which Smith hoped to rezone. Something of a dogleg on the otherwise quadrangular site, this parcel had also jutted into the residential neighborhood that buttresses the property up for rezoning.
The removal of this parcel may’ve reduced the potential intrusion into neighborhood. It nevertheless did little to mollify many of the neighborhood’s residents, who were on hand to share their objections with the commission.
A large number of these critics hailed from Fairview Estates, a decades-old subdivision that’s situated off of Garden Road. Chad Mills, a resident of Fairview Estates, presented the commission’s members with a petition signed by many of this neighborhood’s residents that made no bones about the subdivision’s position on the rezoning request.
“We are united in the desire to maintain the peace and privacy that our neighborhood affords,” Mills stated as he read from the text of the petition. “Please know that we are of one accord in opposition to the proposed rezoning.”
The commission’s members went on to hear from 10 of Mills’ neighbors, who took umbrage with the potential proliferation of commercial development, the prospective disruption to their lives, the impact on property values, the threat to their well water, and the lack of prior notification from the applicant’s representatives.
Huffine admitted that he and his colleagues hadn’t convened a meeting with the neighboring residents before moving ahead with the rezoning request. He added, however, that they had canvassed the neighborhood in order to waive some restrictive covenants that would’ve prevented his client from developing his property. He added that 14 property owners ultimately agreed to disregard the covenants.
Huffine nevertheless acknowledged that he’d like to give some thought to a number of the objections that the commission’s members heard from the neighbors on Monday.
“There are a lot of concerns that have jumped out to me in the citizens’ comments this evening,” he added. “I would like this to be continued to, maybe, next month so I have a chance to look at all the concerns the citizens have.”
The commission’s members agreed to resume their consideration of Smith’s request at their next regularly-scheduled meeting on December 16.
Meanwhile, the commission’s members readily endorsed the proposed redesignation of a small residential parcel at 424 Camp Road so that it can also accommodate certain commercial and institutional uses.
This particular lot, which is located across the street from the local school system’s central office, is currently zoned for use as a duplex residence. Its owner, Debra Dixon Doss, nevertheless informed the commission that the property had housed a photo studio before she and her husband acquired it nearly four decades ago.
Dixon Doss has asked the city to rezone the lot for a limited form of mixed-use development that would allow a mélange of residential, institutional, and commercial activities. She assured the commission that none of these uses would be out of character with the rest of the neighborhood.
“The property may be used for an office or a small business,” she added. “I have personally contacted the neighbors – Greg Hook with the Alamance-Burlington school system as well as the neighbors on both sides.”
The commission’s members voted 5-to-0 to endorse the request to Burlington’s city council.
