300 apartments and 90 townhouses proposed

When the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners and Planning Board hold joint public hearings on Tuesday, Feb. 6, they will be asked to consider a second request for townhouses on Forestville Road, a rewrite of the electronic message boards section in the Unified Development Ordinance, and a new request to build townhouses and apartments for Wake Forest Place, some of the old Schrader-Parker Hannifin factory site.

A bank holding company and one of its subsidiaries, Rialto Capital Management from Atlanta, want to rezone 27 acres once destined to be part of a large shopping center to residential mixed use conditional district and build 90 townhouses in the northwest corner where Kearney Road and Wake Union Church Road meet. They also plan 300 apartments on the land just south of Wake Forest Presbyterian Church. Both apartments and townhouses will abut the St. Ives subdivision and are on opposite sides of the entire tract. Commercial uses are proposed between them.

There will be few road changes in the proposed plan. Lola Lane in St. Ives will not be connected to Wake Union Church Road until all the commercial development planned is complete. Staff does recommend a right turn lane be built on Kearney Road for south-bound traffic turning onto Wake Union Church Road.

There are substantial changes proposed for the Wake Union Church Road intersection with Capital Boulevard when the complex of development is complete as well as changes at other nearby intersections.

The changes in the message boards regulations are that the electronic section of a sign shall not be more than 25 percent of it area, a decrease from 50 percent; and the addition is that there will be no background color and the graphics will be red or amber only and only one color can be displayed. The timing requirement remains: The electronic message shall not change in increments of less than 2 minutes and shall not scroll. New messages shall be timed to fade in and out slowly.

In December the planning board voted five to three to recommend the plan for 95 townhouses called Forestville Townes to the town commissioners who rejected the plan on a three to two vote. The same plan is back with, perhaps, the addition of a short traffic study. (The editor threw out the December information.) There are new planning board and town board members so the votes may be different, but the major stumbling block for both boards in December was the already heavy congestion on Rogers Road at the intersection linking the proposed townhouses to that road.

The planning board meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. in the second-floor meeting room in Wake Forest Town Hall.