Burlington’s city council has given its blessing to a revamped proposal for 200-plus homes along Lakeside Avenue that had, in its previous form, been so fraught with contention that it never reached the council for a decision.
Christened Lakeside Village, this project from Ray Covington and James Kirkpatrick readily cleared the council on Tuesday thanks to the specificity of the pair’s latest rezoning request, which calls for 251 single-family homes on 68.17-acres north of Lakeside Avenue’s juncture with Sharpe Road.
Kirkpatrick and Covington had initially approached city officials with a much more generic incarnation of the same project in 2023. This proposal, which went before Burlington’s planning and zoning commission that spring, had been packaged as a “limited” form of high-density residential use – an option within Burlington’s land use arsenal that omits some of the less palatable activities permitted in a particular zone.
The duo’s attempt to curtail the breadth of their potential activities failed to impress residents in the nearby Brassfield Meadows subdivision. The lack of specificity in the original request was also a deal-breaker for the city’s planning commission.
Although Kirkpatrick was himself a member of this appointed advisory board at the time, he had been recused from the commission’s consideration of the endeavor with Covington. The rest of the commission’s members went on to vote 5-to-1 against endorsing the duo’s request to Burlington’s city council, and the developers eventually withdrew submission rather than risk a potentially adverse decision from the council.
Since the demise of their original submission, Covington and Kirkpatrick have repackaged their project as a “planned development” – a zoning option that allows developers to customize projects to fit idiosyncratic locations. As part of the tailoring process, a developer can request deviations from some of the city’s development standards in exchange for certain concessions that city officials deem to be in the community’s interest.
According to Burlington’s planning director Jamie Lawson, Kirkpatrick and Covington had proposed some fairly modest deviations, such as lot sizes that, in some cases, fall below than the city’s minimum threshold for a high-density residential zone. In return, Lawson said that the developers have submitted a whole cornucopia of “proffers” to make their plans more palatable to city officials.
“They have committed to 200 percent greater open space than what is required in our ordinance,” she went on to inform the council on Tuesday, “and the density that they’re proposing is less than what [the existing] medium density residential district allows for.”
Other items that were spelled out in the rezoning request included buffers and landscaping that exceed city standards, plentiful parking for visitors, land for a potential bus station, and a host of recreational amenities. This latter category included five “satellite parks,” two pickleball courts, 3,400 feet of natural trails, and 14 fitness stations.
These detailed plans for Lakeside Village drew nary a peep from members of the public on Tuesday. They nevertheless rated a few comments from Ryan Moffitt, an attorney for Kirkpatrick and Covington, who contrasted the utter lack of opposition on Tuesday to the static that his clients faced when they trotted out their original proposal in 2023.
“We didn’t have a site plan at that time [when developers first proposed THE PROJECT in 2023]. It was a standard request, and understandably that spurred a lot of questions. . . So, we took the feedback we got from the planning and zoning commission, and we came back to the city with a planned development.”
– Developers’ attorney Ryan Moffitt
“We didn’t have a site plan at that time,” Moffitt recalled. “It was a standard request, and understandably that spurred a lot of questions. . . So, we took the feedback we got from the planning and zoning commission, and we came back to the city with a planned development.”
Moffitt noted that the final version of these plans also reflects four rounds of vetting by the city’s technical review committee, which includes staff representatives from various departments and agencies.
The input of these staff members was also underscored by Kirkpatrick, who acknowledged that his 14 years on the city’s planning commission didn’t adequately prepare him for the enormous contribution that the technical review committee can have on a project.
“There’s lots of advisors on that TRC, and they made our development better. Trust your city staff…If you have something that comes before you that has been before TRC, it has been vetted from its buffers to the canopies of the trees to its parking.”
– Developer and former planning commission chairman James Kirkpatrick
“There’s lots of advisors on that TRC, and they made our development better,” Kirkpatrick told the city council on Tuesday. “Trust your city staff…If you have something that comes before you that has been before TRC, it has been vetted from its buffers to the canopies of the trees to its parking.”
The ultimate byproduct of the review process also struck a chord with council member Dejuana Bigelow, who made the motion to approve the proposed planned development on Tuesday.
“It’s not just homes,” Bigelow told the rest of the council before the 5-to-0 decision to approve the rezoning request. “It’s walkable, and it comes with different amenities…I think it’s going to be the best new community in that area.”
