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April 27, 2006
Heart of the Triad and New Urbanism
Heart of the Triad folks met yesterday.
Here's what didn't make the story, for lack of space.
David Taylor was really asking the steering committee for guidance on a couple of issues. The first had to do with which of the new maps should HDR be working with. The answer, courtesy of High Point's John Faircloth, was all three until the traffic data is back. That'll take close to six weeks, so there won't be a May meeting.
The next issue was what to do with the demand for open space and land zoned for agriculture. Throughout the planning process residents have sadi there should be a premium on open space, which one could take as a euphemism for preserving farmland. But what Taylor said he's found is that people are saying they want to preserve open space, but that he sees nothing to indicate its actually being done. Both counties allow residential development in agricultural zones at a rate of 1 house per acre. That doesn't really preserve much open space.
Taylor said if the counties are interested in preserving ag land, then they should probably consider agricultural zoning restrictions that allow one unit per 20 acres to one unit per 50 acres, or set aside more money for agricultural preservation programs -- where restrictive covenants are placed on a particular piece of property in exchange for some financial consideration.
Bill Whiteheart, a Forsyth County Commissioner who has repeatedly expressed concerns about Heart of the Triad putting restrictions on property owners rights, said that he thinks quite a few farmers in the region are in the same boat he is: they want to farm their land as long as they can, but don't expect the next generation too and want them to be able to capitalize on the land value, if need be.
The committee also discussed the nature of "New Urbanism," which is a movement within planning and development communities to create places where you have the basic principals of an old-fashioned urban neighborhood: homes, offices, shops all within close proximity. It's a movement that's fast on the rise in the United States and particularly in North Carolina, Taylor said. The three states where developments using New Urbanism concepts are most prevelant are Florida, California and North Carolina, he said. With that in mind, several members of the steering committee intend to take a field trip to Charlotte to see how some of these developments are working there. They tend to have high densities that planning boards and members of the public normally shy away from. Taylor said that with a good design, people will buy into the higher density.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2006
Houses, houses everywhere
The High Point Planning and Zoning Commission gave its stamp of approval to that 228-home, 87-acre subdivision tonight. I'll link to the story in the morning.
Something that was interesting to me was that there's already a subdivision on a piece of the property, only it was never built. It exists on paper and includes three roads that run along the edge of the new development. The city's policy has generally been to force developers to either improve road such as those, which exist primarily on paper, or close the rights of way.
Shugart Management was concerned about that request because for two of the three roads it would mean improving a road that the city's transportation department admits doesn't make much sense anymore. But the developer can't close the road because they only own half of the right of way. With the third road, Shugart plans to use it as part of a new connection to Skeet Club across from St. John's.
Jo Williams, who lives on one of the only lots in the old subdivision to be developed, wasn't happy about the discussion. The land was in her husband's family and she said the family had given the lots out as inheritance. Several of the family members sold their property to Shugart, but not all of them did. She was also worried about retaining access to a couple of the lots that she plans to give to her children. Planners said no access could be taken away.
The commission also recommended approval of the Wesleyan Arms zoning, the 122 N. Hamilton zoning and the Ed Kemp Associates zoning at Seward and N. Main. That last one is so EKA can move its offices to a new building.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 9:24 PM | Comments (0)
Ya know it's our birthday?
That's right. The North High Point & Jamestown blog is one year old today.
Break out the cake. Let's blow out a candle.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 5:54 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2006
On the Agenda: High Point planning
The Planning and Zoning commission will be taking its first look at Shugart Management's proposal to build a 228-home subdivision on 87 acres near Dilworth Road and Skeet Club Road. Planners estimate it would bring between 137 and 151 students to Shadybrook, Penn-Griffin, Ferndale and Central schools.
Also on the agenda is a rezoning request by Wesleyan Arms so it can rent office space to outside groups, a request by the owners of 122 N. Hamilton to rezone nearby property for showroom space, and a request to rezone a half-acre at Seward and N. Main streets from residential to office.
What: High Point Planning and Zoning Commission
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday (April 25)
Where: City Council Chambers, 211 S. Hamilton
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 4:10 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2006
Last in Central N.C. ...
... unprotected railroad crossing that is.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation is closing the Stanford Road rail crossing near Jamestown on May 3. The move is possible because of the new bridge over the railroad on the new stretch of Guilford College Road, according to the state.
What's signficant about it is this: The state says that's the last unprotected railroad crossing between Raleigh and Charlotte. And now it will be gone. Every other public rail crossing in the state has stop arms or lights to warn drivers of a coming train.
Forty freight trains and six passenger trains cross this spot daily, traveling at speeds up to 79 mph.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 3:03 PM | Comments (2)
April 20, 2006
Welcome to Moe's
Moe's Southwest Grill is opening today in the Palladium complex off Eastchester.
McAlister's Deli, nearby, is already open.
Firehouse Subs was given a business license for a shop on nearby Samet Drive.
Folks in North High Point have two new choices for lunch, dinner, etc., and a third on the way.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 12:02 AM | Comments (3)
April 19, 2006
Golfing rewards
The golf course at Jamestown Park is introducing a new PRO (Player Rewards Opportunities) Card that will let you accumulate points for playing rounds. The points will eventually be redeemable for services at the course.
Head golf pro Michael Hutcheon introduced the cards to Town Council Tuesday night.
Hutcheon said the goal is to raise the number of rounds played by two or three among the course's regulars.
That would bring an additional $50,000 in revenue. The Web site is new also and Hutchoen said they hope to build a base of 5,000 to 10,000 people who will get notice by e-mail of specials and other happenings at the course.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
Blue Ridge Cos development keeps moving
The mixed-use development that would bring 252 apartments was back in front of the city council yesterday. Blue Ridge CEO David Couch went over several concessions he's offered neighbors in exchange for withdrawl of their protest petition.
It's set for a public hearing May 1.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 8:48 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2006
A land use plan for Jamestown
The town council approved a contract tonight with Piedmont Triad Council of Governments to begin developing a land use plan for Jamestown. It'll cost up to about $40,000 -- although that number is likely to come down when the town hires a planner soon. He or she will be able to do some of the work bringing the cost down.
The town has never had a land-use plan. Does it need one? Well, I guess that depends on your perspective. Usually they're used to guide zoning decisions and set long range goals. As an example, several small residential properties along Main Street have come up for zoning requests lately for business use. They've been granted with the idea that it seemed the right thing to do. A land use plan would say give guidance as to whether it's the right thing.
Developing it, will take 18 to 24 months.
See what else they did below the jump.
Council approved a resolution supporting PTCOG's efforts to protect local governments' franchising rights for cable television. PTCOG administers the town's cable contract and is concerned about several bills in Congress that would transfer franchising authority to the FCC.
Councilman Keith Volz brought up the idea of getting some training in the National Incident Management System, a FEMA program to help communities prepare for disaster response.
Met, unexpectedly, in closed session for personnel reasons. The closed session wasn't on the agenda or advertised.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 11:15 PM | Comments (2)
April 17, 2006
On the Agenda: Jamestown Council
Tomorrow is Jamestown's monthly meeting and the agenda is a little meatier than the last couple of months.
Here are some of the bigger things they're considering:
* Establishing a long-range land development plan for the town and it's extraterritorial jurisdiction (the area outside of town limits that Jamestown is responsible for planning). The town does not have a similar plan and creating one would be an 18-month to two-year process.
* Endorsing the Piedmont Triad Council of Governments' efforts to protect cable t.v. licensing. Local governments typically have a franchising right with cable tv based on the premise that cable lines are in public rights-of-way. There are bills in Congress that would transfer those franchising rights to the FCC or damage a local government's ability to collect its fees as telephone companies are attempting to enter the cable market. PTCOG is asking its members to endorse a resolution in support of the existing system.
* Approval of a solid waste management plan.
* Setting a public hearing to expand the extraterritorial jurisdiction. They're looking at adding three acres off Mackay Road near Guilford College Road.
What: Jamestown Council
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday (April 18)
Where: Jamestown Town Hall
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2006
Office Depot
It looks like Office Depot is interested in opening a shop at Palladium. Developers presented their intentions to city planners earlier today.
This is a short bit running in tomorrow's paper by staff writer Sue Schultz. I was tied up with some police duties:
With the growth of office parks, retail stores and small businesses, an Office Depot in north High Point seems like a natural fit.
Developers for the office-supply store presented plans for a 20,317-square-foot facility to city planners Wednesday.
The store would be located in Palladium at Deep River, a strip mall near the Palladium Theater, near the intersection of Brian Jordan Place and East River Way.
It would be the first big-box office-supply store in the north High Point corridor.
High Point has an Office Depot on Eastchester Drive near Main Street and a Staples on Main Street.
Office Depot officials didn’t return calls Wednesday.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 6:04 PM | Comments (2)
April 10, 2006
Heart of the Triad: End of the Charette
So the long week is long over. Here's the story that ran in Saturday's paper. And unfortunately due to a delay, which could not be helped, in getting the info from the planners and some technical issues on the newspaper's part, the maps did not make the print edition. But they're available here and I'll get to a short explanation in a minute. It's a .pdf file and I'd recommend opening it in a new window so you can see the explanation, since there is little in the file.
There's so much info that didn't make the paper last week, for lack of space, that I'll try to put a lot of it in here without repeating too much from the earlier stories. This is the one from early in the week, by the way. And both the Biz Journal and Winston-Salem Journal were out there much of the week, you can find links to their reports, as well as the N&R's, here. I can't link to the one story the High Point Enterprise ran, which was from the first day press conference.
My notes on the four plans, a key to the maps and some other tidbits below the jump.
The key to the maps:
Purple: Employment Districts
Brown: Employment Centers
Dark Red: Town Center
Light Red: Village Center
Dark Blue: Sports stadium
Light Blue: Institutional
Pink: Retail/entertainment District
Dark Green: Wetlands/natural areas
Light Green: Parks and open space
Yellow: Traditional residential neighborhoods and agriculture
Orange: Urban neighborhoods
Black lines are roads. The two lines that converge are Interstate 40 Business (on top) and Interstate 40 (on bottom). The other is U.S. 311 South. N.C. 66 runs north-south through each map near the center. The road on the south side is Sandy Ridge/Squire Davis Road. West Market/Mountain Street runs across the top of the development north of the interstates. Union Cross Road runs north-south on the west side of the maps and the Dell plant is just to its west.
The maps don't distinguish between proposed and existing roads.
The Guilford-Forsyth county line is not shown, but runs on a north-south parallel just east of N.C. 66.
Concept A: This one has the least overall density of development and is the one that Brent McKinney said an early model predicted would bring 85,000 jobs to the Triad once it was built out. During the run through Friday David Taylor, of the consulting firm HDR Engineering, cited this one as having potential for a "Transit Village" in that northeast corner. On this map, the green line is a proposed rail service between Greensboro, Kernersville and Winston-Salem that PART is already working on.
This one also has a town center right in the middle along N.C. 66 -- you'll see that in several of them and its in part because Kernersville, the town that has planning responsibility for that chunk of land, is already planning some retail and business development out that way. Taylor described that area as being a potential "international intellectual assets zone" with a combined campus for area colleges and universities to use.
And like a couple of the plans, this pushes the second employment district (the big purple blobs) outside the Heart of the Triad bounds and partially overtop the Dell plant.
The planning folks seemed to like this one and a few of the residents did too. Several of the residents also didn't like it. I found many of the residents' preferences were understandably based on where they live and having less intense development around their homes, farms, whatever.
This one would make Colfax, at the intersection of Bunker Hill Road and Mountain Street East, the core of a new urban area.
Concept B: This one is more intense and uses a "grid" road network. UNCG's Keith Debbage, who is helping the consultants, said the grid network would be beneficial in moving people north and south while keeping the developments close to major roads, i.e. the employment districts near Dell and between the interstates.
hat second large north-south road is one that is being planned to connect I-40 to U.S. 311 and then hook-up with a road the High Point Metropolitan Planning Organization has long-planned called the "Westside Thoroughfare" that would run down through the the city's future growth area in northeast Davidson County. That could end up being a major source of workers for Heart of the Triad businesses, Debbage said.
I also ran into a few folks who favored this plan because it looks to keep a fair amount of open space.
Colfax would have a village center and employment district right near that main intersection, with this one
Concept C: This one pushes a lot more of the intense development to the center and the south edge, which would be north High Point. Sandy Ridge Road and Squire Davis Road would get a couple of village centers and urban neighborhoods. This one has a meandering "Parkway"-type road running north and south -- the one that looks like a sideways "S". That same road will show up on D. Taylor described that center development area as potentially being the heart of a recreational and amateur/professional sports district, with a stadium. He said that employment district between the interstates could be a "specialized manufacturing" area.
Nobody, I talked to particularly preferred this one over the others, but by no means were my conversations a scientific sampling.
The main crossroads of Colfax would get the least amount of development with this one. And a lot of development would be concentrated on Union Cross.
Concept D: This one shares the "parkway" with concept C. Several people I talked with didn't like the way the "urban" neighborhoods (the orange splotches) followed it in the southwest corner. This one has the retail district (the pink spot) right-off I-40 before the split and makes Colfax a "town center."
This one is similar to C in many respects. There's a high concentration of development near Dell and Union Cross and there is a fair amount along Sandy Ridge Road and Squire Davis Road.
On to other things: The week wasn't without it's difficulties. During the Wednesday public meeting, Jimmy Clinard took the chance to chastise members of the steering committee and the consultants because he did not know, was not informed, about a meeting especially for property owners the night before (Tuesday).
Earlier that same day, Taylor had expressed concern that of 45 attendees at that property owners meeting, 45 were from Colfax. That means none from Union Cross or other parts of eastern Forsyth. For that reason, he said they intend to schedule another property owners meeting in the future to gain input from those folks.
Also as the topic of sports came up as a possible industry to locate in Heart of the Triad it became a prime example of how difficult this thing will be to get all six local governments on board.
There was some brief discussion of trying to lure the ACC headquarters out there, of possibly building a coliseum that could compete for ACC basketball tourneys and other events, and of maybe building a PGA-level golf course to move the Greater Greensboro Open (or whatever they call it these days) out there. Greensboro Councilwoman Sandy Carmany immediately pointed out that the city is proud to have the ACC, the coliseum and its tournaments and that she didn't think that was going to fly.
The end result: the stadium talked about Friday night was Major League Soccer, and not a coliseum. That's a whole other discussion that could be interesting -- could MLS make it in the Triad?
And during the elected officials session on Monday, Winston-Salem councilman put it pretty succintly when he asked "What's in it for Winston-Salem?" He went on to ask, how does he explain to his constituents how this benefits them. It might be a tough sell and that question remains to be answered.
And for some opinions on Heart of the Triad you can check here, here and here.
Well, that's probably enough to spark some discussion. Even after that long post, I still feel like there's a lot left out there I could write about.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 4:34 PM | Comments (0)
April 5, 2006
Blue Ridge tries again in North High Point
Yesterday Blue Ridge Companies Chief Executive Officer David Couch another proposed a series of changes to his plan for a mixture of offices and apartments on 24-acres between Whites Mill Road and Eastchester Drive. Click here to check out the article.
This is Couch's second attempt to develop the property, in an area considered overdeveloped by many. What do you think? Is the area overcrowded? Should Couch's development be allowed to move forward?
Posted by at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
April 4, 2006
Heart of the Triad: First day impressions
The Heart of the Triad planning sessions kicked off yesterday.
The limits of space in the paper make it difficult to fully explain what's going on out there.
Yesterday was interesting. The early sessions were mostly listening to what the various groups that have some stake in the thing had to say: the local politicans, school leaders, government managers and economic development people. But in the evening it was less listening and more talking: That's when they made a presentation to about 120 residents about the process.
The later session was less rosy from the perspective of several participants to which I talked. Nancy Potts, who I used in the story, was unhappy that farmland isn't listed in any of the uses. Jeanie Harrison, 49, a former college professor and environmental scientist, didn't particularly like the method of presentation. She felt it was too full of planning jargon and not explained in simple enough terms. I ran into a few other folks who had similar gripes.
High Point was well represented at most of the sessions (I wasn't there for all of them). At the meeting of politicians, councilmen Latimer Alexander and John Faircloth and Councilwoman Lisa Stahlmann were there.
If you're looking for some additional perspective, over at Blog-IT-O ergo sum, Jim Capo calls the process a charade. And Greensboro Councilwoman Sandy Carmany has written quite a bit about Heart of the Triad at her blog. The News & Record's editorial page editor, Allen Johnson, also has some thoughts on it over here.
Throughout the session there were hints at what might come out of this. Steve McDonald, an economist, laid out the three most likely scenarios: Do nothing. Build a logistics and warehousing center. Build a research and development center.
If nothing is done, according to the planners, then the area will develop with light-industrial and low-density residential. And that in turn, they argue, leads to sprawl.
The logistics center option is interesting. McDonald said those types of places tend to use greater square footage and build out faster than a research and development park. It seems to fit logically with Dell & FedEx.
The research and development center option would compete with RTP and probably with the new research campus under construction in Kannapolis.
So maybe Capo's right. There is a foregone conclusion and option B it is. I'm not so sure though. I'll be curious to see what comes out of all this on Friday.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 5:46 PM | Comments (0)
April 3, 2006
Blue Ridge up again
This is just a reminder, but the Blue Ridge Companies proposal to develop 22 acres between Eastchester Drive and Whites Mill Road is going to be considered tomorrow morning by the City Council's planning committee. It's at 9 a.m. in City Hall.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
Dwindling land prospects
Sue Schultz had a story in the weekend editions about the future of business growth in north High Point. She looks at the effects of some of these large-scale developments such as Piedmont Centre and what the prospects for similar business parks are.
Posted by Jonathan Jones at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
