A second opinion from Burlington’s planning and zoning commission has resuscitated the hopes of a contentious rezoning request for the southwestern corner of Garden Road and Boone Station Drive.
This much-disputed proposal from developer David Morton was initially panned by the city’s planning commission in December after being bruited around by its members for three consecutive months. A substantially reduced version of Morton’s request was then sent to Burlington’s city council – only to ping pong back to the planning commission after the council held an inconclusive public hearing in January.
This dizzying back-and-forth culminated on Monday when the planning commission voted 4-to-1 to recommend coun-cil’s approval of Morton’s latest request. Should the council accept this suggestion, it would allow the Burlington-based property manager to build more than 50 senior-oriented apartments on four vacant lots that Whitsett resident Stanley Smith owns next to the Garden Road entrance for the Alamance Crossing shopping center.
Read earlier coverage:
City council’s Feb. 4, 2025 decision to send the rezoning proposal back to planning board for further review and consideration: https://alamancenews.com/council-sends-garden-road-rezoning-back-to-planning-board/
Original planning board consideration, and negative recommendation, in December 2024: https://alamancenews.com/planning-board-recommends-against-commercial-zoning-project-near-alamance-crossing-shopping-center-entrance/
Monday’s endorsement comes in stark contrast to the commission’s response in December when it voted 6-to-1 to recommend against Morton’s request. Yet, the details of the property manager’s latest entry are quite different from that earlier, ill-fated submission – and they’re even further removed from his original proposal, which was salted with a wide range of commercial and institutional uses in addition to his current request for multifamily housing.
The gradual erosion of Morton’s ambitions was deftly summed up by Lawson Brown, an attorney with Burlington’s Vernon Law Firm who presented the property manger’s latest request to the city’s planning commission.
“What you had come before you before was a smorgasbord of uses,” Brown, who also doubles Mebane’s city attorney, recounted at that evening’s regularly-scheduled meeting. “What we have limited it to is [the form of] multifamily housing that’s allowed in a general business district.”
The request that Morton had initially submitted to the city’s planning commission was, indeed, the developmental equivalent of a lavish buffet. Framed as a “limited” form of commercial zoning, it originally sought 67 of 119 activities that Burlington’s ordinarily permits in a general business district. Among these proposed uses were such disparate entries as an arboretum, a post office, a doggie daycare, a drive-thru restaurant, a hotel or motel, a warehouse, and an outpatient treatment facility.
Despite its proximity to Burlington’s largest commercial development, the site that Morton had selected for this mélange of activities also sits next to a single-family subdivision dubbed Fairview Estates. Since the proposal’s debut in October, the residents of this decades-old neighborhood have mounted a well organized resistance against the property manager’s plans. Their objections also rubbed off on the city’s planning staff, which leaned on the applicant to drop some of the more intense commercial uses from his rezoning request.
As an initial concession to his detractors, Morton jettisoned one of the five lots that had made up his original development site in October. This particular parcel, which also belongs to Stanley Smith of Whitsett, had jutted out from the rest the site to form a dog leg within Fairview Estates. The elimination of this panhandle was nevertheless small comfort to the neighborhood’s residents, who showed up in force when the planning commission took up Morton’s request in November.
In response to the neighborhood’s protests as well as the planning staff’s qualms, Morton and his representatives did some reconstructive surgery on the original submission. By the time they returned to the planning commission in December, they had cut the initial catalog of uses to 39 items. They made further reductions at the commission’s meeting and secured an endorsement from the planning staff. Yet, these efforts fell flat with the neighbors and ultimately tanked with the planning commission, which voted 6-to-1 against recommending the request to the council.
Following this negative recommendation, Morton and his associates decided to ditch all their proposed uses save for multifamily housing. They went on to pitch this remaining item to Burlington’s city council during a public hearing on January 21.
Brown, who had joined Morton’s team a few weeks before these proceedings, assured the city’s elected leaders that the proposed rental apartments would be good for the city as well as the immediate neighborhood. Brown went on to reiterate many of the same points he shared with the council when he appeared before the city’s planning commission on Monday.
“I think there’s a number of reasons why this should be recommended to the city council,” Brown told the members of this appointed advisory board. “The rezoning is consistent with the future land use plan…and the present use is inconsistent with that land use plan…Thirdly, it is a logical extension of existing zoning…This is also the highest and best use of this property.”
The applicant’s attorney went on to remind the commission that city officials have traditionally encouraged multifamily development as a transition between commercial activity and single-family homes. He said that, in this case, this land-use segue would comprise a little more than 54 apartments that his client intends to market to an older demographic.
Although Morton attended last month’s council meeting, he was absent from the planning commission’s proceedings on Monday. (Brown said that his client couldn’t make the meeting because he was off celebrating his 60th birthday). Yet, the applicant’s physical presence in January had done little to discourage his proposal’s critics, who buffeted the city’s elected leaders with complaints about the potential impact of Morton’s request.
Among other things, the project’s reluctant neighbors harangued the council about the high density, clashing appearance, and potential traffic impact of Morton’s apartments. Some of these fears were later echoed by members of the council itself, who pressed the applicant’s representatives for additional pledges to placate the residents of Fairview Estates.
One concession that that the council’s members had repeatedly sought was a commitment from the applicant to situate his project’s entrances away from the nearby single-family neighborhood. At the time, Morton’s representatives deferred to the state’s transportation department on any potential road connections with Fairview Estates. On Monday, however, Brown offered the planning commission some additional assurance based on a three-year-old state statute that he said allows an apartment complex with fewer than 100 units to make do with a single entrance.
“This project, conceptually, will have one entrance off of Garden Road,” the applicant’s attorney went on to declare, “and it will not be intruding into the neighborhood.”
Brown’s revelation on this score proved so compelling to the planning commission’s chairman James Kirkpatrick that he admonished the residents at Monday’s meeting to forgo any complaints about traffic that they had been planning to make. This instruction had the reverse effect on Fairview Drive resident Lucy Saconn.
“I’d like to reiterate my concern about the traffic increases,” Saconn announced when she reached the podium. “The roads in my neighborhood are already congested at high traffic times.”
Saconn’s persistent angst about traffic was later fleshed out by Angela Bostek of Westview Terrace. Bostek suggested that Morton’s future tenants may mistakenly attempt to use her small dead end as a short-cut to reach Garden Road’s intersection with Boone Station Drive.
“We cannot discount the number of people who turn up along Westview to get to that light,” she said before lamenting the relatively high density of Morton’s proposed apartments.
Another sticking point with the council in January had been the applicant’s lack of a site plan to accompany his rezoning request. Some members of the council had yearned for the specificity that such a plan would provide for features like building footprints, road improvements, and landscaping enhancements.
On Monday, Morton’s representatives argued that this level of certainty is simply not de rigueur for a “limited” use zoning request.
Brown recalled that Burlington used to have a regulatory option called conditional zoning that had enabled developers to submit site plans, architectural renderings, and lists of potential uses to augment their rezoning requests. This option has since been replaced by a customization tool called “planned development” as well as the self-imposed restrictions that come with a so-called “limited use” rezoning request. Brown conceded that some seasoned practitioners still hanker for the erstwhile option of conditional zoning, which had combined these two approaches into a single package.
“A lot of us old folks are used to conditional zoning where you present a site plan,” he added. “But this limited use is something new.”
The absence of site plans under limited use zoning was later brought home by Chad Huffine, a civil engineer in Morton’s employ. Huffine added that he has discussed some potential landscaping features with neighbors, although he stressed that he can’t include them in his client’s formal application for rezoning.
Huffine’s admission ultimately proved disappointing to Mike Mills, a retired state transportation engineer who now serves on Burlington’s planning commission.
“It would have been nice to have a plan to look at that shows the buildings, the landscaping, and the buffering,” Mills went on to opine.
“Unfortunately in the absence of conditional zoning, I can’t make that commitment,” Huffine replied. “A plan is not required, and I don’t think is appropriate.”
Mills went on to cast the lone vote of dissent to the commission’s 4-to-1 decision to endorse Morton’s rezoning request. Commission member Lee Roane ultimately made the motion to recommend this request to the city council – which passed with the added support of Kirkpatrick, the commission’s vice chairman Charlie Beasley, and junior member Ryan Spadaccini.
