Mebane’s city council agreed Monday night to a rezoning request that will allow one of the area’s most prolific developers to undertake another subdivision, this one for 147, three-bedroom townhouses on 25½ acres on the outskirts of Mebane in western Orange County along Ben Wilson Road (at the intersection with Bowman Road).
The proposal had been unanimously recommended by the city’s planning board after the developer revised it to provide 15 fewer townhouses coupled with more parking space than first proposed. The planning board approved the revised proposal unanimously in August after having recommended against the first iteration of the plan in June, also unanimously.
Much of the council’s discussion focused on whether to have one or two crosswalks across Ben Wilson Road to another development, of 55 townhomes, being built by the same builder – Capital City Homes – across the street. The developer also indicated that all of the townhouses will have two-car garages.
The Meadowstone Townhomes proposal approved by the council Monday night had one crossing, as recommended by the state Department of Transportation and the city’s technical review committee. But spokesman Tim Smith of Summit Design and Engineering said the company had originally proposed two crossings, and would be very willing to have two again, but had eliminated the second one in its final plans at the insistence of DOT.
Council members solicited assurances that the developer would seek a review of the plan with the company’s renewed request for a second crossing, but opted not to send its own endorsement of a second crosswalk, deciding to defer to DOT on the question.
Councilmen also received assurances from Smith and their own city staff that the multi-use path being proposed by the developer would meet city standards before eventually being turned over to the city.
During planning board consideration, Smith said he felt that the price ranges for the apartments would be in the range of $225,000 to $250,000.
Among the amenities in the subdivision are a community building, picnic shelter, a small shelter, a playground, and a dog park.
In response to a question from councilman Everette Greene about whether a swimming pool had been considered as another amenity, Smith said normally a pool is not considered viable in developments unless there were more homes than the 147 planned here.
Smith reaffirmed that the developer would build the amenities during the first phase of construction.
In a sequence of votes, city council members agreed unanimously both to the developer’s request for annexation of the acreage into the city and to rezoning for the 147-townhouse layout.
See August coverage of the planning board’s consideration of the revised project which cut townhouse number from 162 to 147 and increased the number of parking spaces by 85: https://alamancenews.com/developers-changes-help-reverse-planning-board-opposition/
See earlier (June) coverage of the planning board’s first consideration of the project: https://alamancenews.com/planning-board-on-rezoning-proposal-for-townhomes-too-dense-insufficient-parking/
