If it seems so unlikely that they’ll win their lawsuit… what the hell are they actually trying to accomplish here???
It’s actually a pretty big deal because this case will most likely set these plans going forward under missing middle in the R-4 and R-6 zoning districts. It is already expected that this one will be appealed to superior court.
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What is the expected (read: realistic) outcome? I’m very, very not lawsuit/court-savvy…
Somehow I found a way to listen to the entire 8 hours, sometimes just 30 minutes at a time.
As an outside observer, here are some of my thoughts:
- It seems that the objection of the neighborhood has shifted to the site not having a planted 20 ft buffer. As the hearing built, the narrative felt like it was shifting in that direction.
- The neighborhood’s attorney was building a story of an undisciplined planning team with conflicting rulings, lack of meeting notes, etc. Frankly, this seemed to be pretty effective and it didn’t make the department look very good.
- Justin Rametta remained calm and professional. I was impressed by how he resisted letting the neighborhood’s attorney get under his skin.
- The next door neighbor to the subject property seemed to be particularly concerned about not having a buffer. What’s amusing to me about this is that the neighbor at 912 Williamson has a huge addition that’s slammed up against their western property line, and the neighbor at 1517 Iredell has their house pretty much slammed up against the subject property. I’m not certain which neighbor spoke, but he was pretty heated/emotional, and accused city planning of not reaching out to the neighbors at all.
- I was surprised how nervous the attorney representing the city seemed to be near the end of the hearing. It felt to me that she let the day get to her a bit. Her voice was shaky…not a good look IMO.
- While I didn’t watch any of the other hearings, I gather that the developer previously offered a planted buffer with an average of 20 ft (with a minimum of 10 feet). The homeowner being questioned about that wouldn’t commit to agreeing to it without seeing it drawn on a site plan.
Personally, while I don’t object to densifying this property, I really don’t like the site plan myself. In fact, I sort of hate it. I would have rather seen the townhouses line Williamson and Iredell with a few in the interior of the site.
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Thanks for the summary.
It sounds like the arguments are shifting to more of a challenge of due process rather than challenge of overarching zoning. Which makes sense because how can you challenge a zoning ordinance other than the process by which it was written?
On the subject property, I like the current site plan mostly because the opportunity to landscape the shared open space could/should maintain a park-feel from the street, which most neighbors should be very happy with
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Good summation / points. This is a ‘high profile’ case illustrating one of the biggest concerns for every neighborhood with missing middle infill - whether you can assume ‘good faith design’ either from the UDO expectations or the developer themselves. The neighboring homeowner, Dr Zolak I think, certainly was exhibiting frustrated body language ( there were undertones of feeling screwed from the sale of the home - since the backstory is he bought that home from the landowner pursuing this compact development now, stating - ‘they Chappell development group never spoke directly to us, Singerman closed on the adjacent property two days after our home closed’ in separate bits of his comments). The fact that his biggest concern being pushed was the buffer, which was directly offered to meet UDO specs by Birch (dev attorney) and not accepted, illustrates the lack of trust which he also exactingly described.
Not everyone can read plans and project what the finished product looks like and
our municipal process doesn’t require a concrete plan to get things rolling, rather requires more planning along the way to permitting…it’s a drawn out process that quite honestly (from my own dealings with the city) is cloaked in less than optimal communication and doesn’t foster the rosiest expectations.
Seems better planning from the dev side could foster better understanding of the outcome, which might begin to peel back some of the neighborhood uncertainty around what will happen when completed.
All of that costs extra money and time on the dev side and none of this overcomes the individual fact that your neighborhood is going to change, rather it attempts to answer as many uncertainties as possible to foster the good will to embrace the change together…
Long way to say that I’m for increased density in this neighborhood (and in my own) but I don’t know if I’d love this particular site plan and it doesn’t seem like I’d yield unlimited trust within the context of this story.
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Thanks for all that backstory. John Solic owns 912 Williamson (the HGTV Love it or List it house). That house has a huge addition behind it that hugs its back property line with 1520 Jarvis and is extremely close to 920 Williamson as well. Whether he or the previous owner put that addition onto the house is not known to me, but the irony is not lost on me that his home doesn’t have a buffer between him and his two neighbors. The subject property for the proposed development also isn’t necessarily close to his home. From a quick rough measurement using Google maps, the property line is about 45+ ft to his home’s east, and using 3D on Google maps, his east facade seems to be the “services” side of his home anyway. Also, the distance to the actual proposed townhouses to his house doesn’t seem to be that different to the existing mansion on the site. I’d love to see the proposed site plan with the existing structures ghosted on it for comparison.
At this point, the sticking point seems to be the private drive/road leading to these townhouses, and how close that drive/road is to the property line without a buffer.
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I wonder if a compromise could be having the access road as grass? I saw one of these going in on one of my projects last week. Wouldn’t really add much physical ‘buffer’ but might give the sense of a more natural separation. (In addition to the 10’ of trees and bushes)
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I had wondered about that too actually using one of those systems that you are sharing!
If it’s essentially a private driveway, there could be all sorts of ways to manifest it. You could even have that grass driveway visually reinforced with a ribbon drive cutting through it to bring charm and character.
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Previous owner, Nathan Singerman, put on the addition.
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There’s already three ‘driveway’ penetrations of this property requesting to subdivide into a compact development.
First, here’s the one for 912 -
Here’s the adjacent one to 912 for 908 -
And two visible for 908 from Iredell -
Really boils down to change ( in the ‘pastoral’ context of the existing property and its level of activity ) and the pending ‘unknown’ of adding more (+ / - 17) residences to this area. All the resulting feelings about neighborhood character layered with how it’s handled, communicated, expectations, etc. lead to here. Interesting to see how this shakes out (…and then holds up under appeal…).
I know I’ve got my popcorn ready for the next episode of ‘Densification in Olde Raleigh’ as missing middle progresses.
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Man I was wondering why this address sounded familiar. I used to know that family. I’m pretty surprised they sold it, seemed like there was a lot of sentimental value in that house. It didn’t seem in bad shape when I visited, either, but that was a while back.
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one car trip to sams with some dill pickle slices and a cozy at home chik fil a experience?
So the new thing Charlotteans are using to defend their city’s poor average density is census tract density. There are some really surprising things to learn going down this rabbit hole. Apparently, census tracts are not like congressional districts–designed to have the same population. Instead they can have any population between 0-8000. The tracts are maintained across many censuses to consistently measure inflow and outflow of residents in an area.
Raleigh’s central business district is pretty much entirely contained within a 0.8 mile tract. You could be forgiven for not knowing this is not the densest tract in the city. Now, this will change soon enough when 3000 more residents are plonked into this area and the tract has to be cut up after it passes 8000 residents. Very likely, one or more of the resulting tracts will be quite dense.
The densest tract is a real shocker. It’s entirely suburban car-dependent apartments, townhomes, empty land (a shocking amount of it), and student housing for NCSU. It just happens to be the one tract in Raleigh where there is little to no single family housing in its borders, so it reaches the magic number of 10,000 people per square mile which triggers the darkest shade on the Census’s map. There’s a lot that can be said about this but I think this explains why BRT is going on Western and not Hillsborough pretty concisely.
This is relatively common in other NC cities. The densest tracts in Durham, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro are also in or near universities.
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Update on 908 Williamson Board of Adjustment Case - The Board voted 3/2 in favor of standing for the applicants. The Board voted 3/2 against the applicants (in favor of the city) on the merits of the case. The applicants will most likely appeal to superior court as this is the only way to overturn a BOA decision.
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Thanks for the update. I watched the youtube on it while eating my lunch.
And, you were able to hold it down! I’m impressed.
Look, if I was able to stomach more than 8 hours of watching last week, I figured that I could keep my food down for this short meeting.
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In simple terms, does this mean yes townhomes or no townhomes?
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Yes, the site plan maintains three landscape features that are the defining characteristics of the site: the large lawn at the street corner, plus substantial groves of trees on either street. The townhouses are tucked into the middle of the site, replacing a house that everyone agrees is not that remarkable.
Another instance where blindly applying site-planning “rules” (e.g., street build-to lines) would result in a worse product.
I’ve asked a bunch of times about trying out less street-looking materials for private drives… the answer is that the city’s requirements are fixed:
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