Bolus heirs requesting rezoning for subdivision on Wait A year ago the Wake Forest Town Board by a four to one vote approved Marc Iafrate’s request to build 108 apartments on South Franklin Street just north of the N.C. 98 bypass (the Dr. Calvin Jones Highway). Next Tuesday, Iafrate will ask the town planning board and commissioners to allow him to change his plans so that he can build 61 townhouses, the Franklin Street Townhomes, in place of the apartments, reducing the estimated number of residents by about 130. The Wake Forest Planning Board will take up his request and will also hear a rezoning and master plan request by Michael G. and Thomas K. Bolus for a 49-lot subdivision to be called Lakestone on Wait Avenue. The Iafrate request will be an evidentiary quasi-judicial hearing with sworn testimony; the hearing for the rezoning for a conditional use district and

The town’s Government Affairs Committee consisting of Mayor Vivian Jones and Commissioner Zachary Donahue (the Gazette was incorrect last week) will meet Tuesday, Feb. 3, at 4:30 p.m. in conference room 201 to take up the concerns voiced by downtown business owner Drew Bridges during the town board’s Jan. 20 meeting. Police Chief Jeff Leonard has been invited to take part. Like all other town meetings except those designated as closed sessions under state law this meeting is open to the public Bridges said his back door, which faces the railroad tracks, had been broken into once and later a second attempt had been made. In a different incident in the same time frame, a “tussle” on the sidewalk in front of his Storyteller’s Books Store resulted in one person being thrown through his display window. He also said there are always young adults in the gathering spot next door

So Google is coming to Raleigh and to Cary and other western Wake towns. That leaves Wake Forest, Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon as the red-headed stepchildren. * * * * A tour of new and future subdivision sites over the weekend was instructive. Traditions, of course, is booming and like other ongoing subdivisions was not part of the tour. Instead, we navigated very carefully through the ruts and deep puddles in Copper Beech Lane to see that no dirt has been turned yet in the Tryon subdivision, which really needs access to sewer to proceed with development. Only about 100 of its 415 lots on its 131.5 acres can be served with City of Raleigh sewer through the adjacent Kings Glen subdivision. The developer has tried to purchase easements for a sewer line from the south side of Wait Avenue to serve the rest of the land, but two landowners

During 2014, the Wake Forest Inspections Department issued permits for 548 new homes where an estimated 1,550 new town residents are living or will soon be living. These figures are unofficial estimates based on the monthly report from the inspections department and calculated using Planning Department Director Chip Russell’s figure of 2.83 residents for each household. That is also the figure used by the U.S. Census. The numbers were broken out into 84 apartment units, 87 townhouse units and 377 single-family homes, all in a number of new and existing subdivisions. The Gazette will publish the official numbers when the 2014 Annual Development Report is issued by the planning department.

The Wake Forest Police Department recently named Det. Brian Loveless as the 2014 Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Officer of the Year. A specialized law enforcement program, the CIT is a partnership between 17 Wake County law enforcement agencies, Wake County Human Services and the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The initiative is designed to develop a more effective, compassionate and safer approach to interacting with people suffering from a mental illness or developmental disability crisis. The CIT provides 40 hours of specialized training to sworn law enforcement officers. The training helps officers identify individuals in a mental health crisis and utilize effective techniques to deescalate crisis situations. As a result, there are fewer incidents of incarceration of persons with mental illness for misdemeanor charges, and fewer injuries to both officers and individuals with mental illness. In Wake County, more than 500 officers have been certified. “Det. Loveless was selected due