JDH Capital : News
PHILLIPS' REZONING VOTE:ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO
15 Oct 2008
BY HEATHER SUMMERVILLE
Almost two years to the day after the request first came forward, the Huntersville town board finally approved a general rezoning petition for a shopping center on land in northwest Huntersville owned by former mayoral candidate Danny Phillips.
This week's vote may have been cause for some celebration for Phillips and his wife Madeline, proprietors of the Old Store on Brown Mill Road and would-be parties to the development of the Shops at Crossroad Village nearby. But their rezoning saga isn't over yet. There's another chapter to go before the town can close the book on one of the most prolonged rezoning hearings in recent town memory.
At their Monday evening board meeting, Huntersville commissioners voted 3-2 (Ron Julian and Sarah McAulay against) to approve the general rezoning of 15 acres on the southwest corner of Beatties Ford Road and N.C. 73 from Rural to Highway Commercial. The approval doesn't mean that construction can begin anytime soon, though. The Phillips have been granted their general rezoning request, but in order to proceed with the development, they'll need to wait until the board votes on a conditional district rezoning request for the same property on Nov. 17.
Also at Monday's meeting, the board continued discussion of the controversial complicated Huntersville East plan on Highway 73, on the eastern edge of town, and once again heard from the Birkdale neighborhood about speed humpds for Devonshire Drive (see story below).
The Phillips' general rezoning request has been running concurrently with a conditional district rezoning request that includes the same, 15-acre property, plus two adjoining parcels, which together create a 23.6-acre tract. The proposed, 120,000-square-foot neighborhood shopping center has been laid out on the larger tract.The request for a conditional rezoning -- different because it includes development sketch plans and a traffic impact analysis, whereas the general rezoning only rezones the land and the developer must return to the board for design approval -- has not yet been approved. Developer JDH Capital, which is purchasing the Phillips' property, submitted the conditional rezoning request last December with the site plan and the additional land parcels.
* Huntersville East: If it was strike two for the Glenwood Development team at this week's Huntersville town board meeting, then it's because they swung way ahead of the ball -- again.
Glenwood's plans for Huntersville East, a high-density commercial and residential development on N.C. 73 near Davidson-Concord Road, are, by some measures, premature. The development is dependent upon an area plan the town board hasn't adopted, a traffic impact analysis that is incomplete, and a road plan that is uncertain at best and impossible at worst. It's no wonder, then, that even after the second public hearing on the development, there were more questions and fewer straight answers. In the case of Glenwood's proposed "Huntersville East," town staff remain unsupportive, commissioners unimpressed and citizens intensely opposed.
At its Monday night meeting, the town board continued the public hearing on Glenwood Development's petition to rezone 60 acres at the southwest corner of N.C. 73 and the proposed Prosperity Church Road extension from Rural to Highway Commercial. Huntersville East, the development planned for the corner, will include 162,000 square feet of commercial space (down from 250,000 in the developer's previous presentation), including a grocery store, gas station, restaurants and office space, as well as 118 attached townhouses. The town will take the matter up again Nov. 3.
