August 6, 2003: Filing ends with only four candidates for three seats
What has dampened enthusiasm for local government?
Wake Forest, which in the past always had a healthy crop of contenders for seats on the board of commissioners, this year has only four people vying for three seats. Incumbent Commissioners Velma Boyd and David Camacho have filed to retain their positions, and Stephen Barrington and Mark Traveis, both newcomers to town politics, round out the slate.
The staff of the Wake County Board of Elections sent Town Clerk Joyce Wilson a stack of filing forms in June, but most of them were still on her desk Friday morning as she and reporters watched the clock hands move to 12 noon, the end of the filing period.
Two years ago, when two commission seats were open, there were five candidates: winners Rob Bridges and Chris Malone along with David Camacho, Anne Hines and Bary Hayes. That was the year Commissioner Vivian Jones was elected mayor, beating Commissioner Boyce Medlin and Mayor George Mackie, who was ending his first term. Camacho was appointed to fill Jones’ unexpired term.
It was much more a free-for-all in 1999. At the start, there were 13 candidates for three seats, but Bob Hill and Dick Finke dropped out early while John McDonald III called it quits shortly before Election Day.
Kim Marshall, Velma Boyd and Vivian Jones were elected – with only 14 votes separating the three. Marshall had 1,040 votes, Boyd 1,033 and Jones 1,028. The other candidates were Kenneth Blakeslee, Thomas Harris, Lenwood Long, Chris Malone, Kevin Marr, Loraine Smith and Gail Yobe.
Mackie was elected mayor in 1997, narrowly defeating Bob Hill, and there were six candidates for the two open board seats. Thomas Walters and Boyce Medlin topped Velma Boyd, Dick Finke, Tommy Byrne and Kim Marshall.
The Gazette has interviewed the four candidates – Barrington, Boyd, Camacho and Traveis – as they filed. There will be further interviews about their views, their spending and the progress of the campaigns between now and Election Day, Nov. 4. We welcome any suggestions about questions for the candidates, and we also urge everyone who has not done so to register to vote.
This week, Traveis said he would be “hopping” rather than running for a board seat. Another driver on Falls of Neuse Road lost control and struck Traveis’ car head-on last week, leaving Traveis with severe injuries, including one to his right ankle that required surgery. He was released from WakeMed Sunday and is recuperating at home. We wish him a speedy recovery.
August 6, 2003: Free potatoes at DuBois
The Society of St. Andrew Gleaners will deliver 55,000 pounds of white potatoes to The DuBois Center early Thursday morning, Aug. 7.
People may go to the center on Franklin Street to pick up one of the 50-pound bags or a lesser amount if that is what is needed.
“We need your help in getting them distributed to needy families in the community,” Bettie Murchison, the center’s executive director, said in a call for volunteers.
Murchison said she needs help in breaking the 50-pound bags down into smaller sizes for senior citizens and families who only want a few potatoes.
She also needs the help of people with trucks who can deliver the bags of potatoes.
If you can help, call Murchison at 554-1436.
August 6, 2003: Questions about delay in building Heritage High
Monday and Tuesday the Wake County Commissioners and the Wake County Board of Education agreed on the latest building and renovation plan for schools.
The commissioners slated a $450 million bond referendum for Oct 7. If the voters approve, that money and another $100 million the commissioners will find from available cash and savings, will fund 13 new schools and a long list of renovations in the next four years.
Three new elementary schools are scheduled for the northeastern part of Wake County as well as renovations, but there will only be $3.6 million for site development in the pot for Heritage High School. The cost to build the school will be about $40 million.
Christina H. Lighthall, senior director for facilities planning for the school system, updated the Wake Forest commissioners Tuesday afternoon about the local plans.
“You all are the new growth center, there’s no doubt about it,” Lighthall said, adding that this area will see reassignment and the other stresses growth and new schools bring.
She was disappointed Heritage High did not make the cut in this building plan. “There are two serious shortfalls, Heritage High and a middle school in eastern Wake County,” Lighthall said. “It’s painful.”
“We are not being given enough respect,” Commissioner Chris Malone. The area has been voting against the bond issues, he said, because it has not been heard. “It would really behoove the county to look at its priorities.
“We need that high school,” Malone said. “I would pay attention to it if I were you. I couldn’t tell you how much I hear it.”
Lighthall agreed with Commissioner Thomas Walters and the others that there is and will be crowding at the high school until Heritage is completed. Remember, she said, that the school system identified $836 million in construction and renovation needs and will have $550 million to do the job.
In the next four-year plan (2008 onward), Lighthall said, Heritage High will be built and that will give the school system the chance to do the systematic general upgrade Wake Forest-Rolesville High needs. She envisions moving the entire school to the new Heritage while those renovations are underway, just as Wake Forest Elementary has been moved to Jones Dairy Elementary.
But for this four-year plan, Plan 2004, WF-R High will have some minor upgrades that include adding two tennis courts, upgrading some classrooms, labs and support areas and installing an irrigations system. The cost will be $2.5 million.
At WF-R Middle School, reroofing and other improvements will cost $1.3 million. Pleasant Union and Brassfield elementaries as well as Wakefield High will see minor renovations.
Lighthall provided a map of the planned new school areas, the same map that has appeared in local newspapers. It has an error. There are three new elementaries planned for northeast Wake County – E-12, E-14 and E-17. The legend with the map says E-11 is planned for this area, but it is really out of the Wake Forest area.
E-17, Lighthall said, is planned but the school system has not determined its general location yet so it was not shown on the map. E-12 is planned for southeast of Wake Forest and E-14 southeast of Rolesville. E-17, Lighthall said, will be built in that same general area.
The elementary schools will each cost between $13.4 and $15.6 million. The school system is building larger elementary schools, Lighthall said, because of the shortage of money and because the state has mandated lower class size for kindergarten through second grade. Where before a kindergarten class could have 23 students that has been reduced to 18, meaning, Lighthall said, she has to find classrooms “for all those little fives.”
August 4, 2004: WF firemen, townspeople mourn fallen chief
Sunday Wake Forest said good-bye to Fire Chief Jimmy Keith who had used his unique situation and talents to change the Wake Forest Fire Department Inc. from an all-volunteer squad of 30-some men in a small town to a diverse, well-trained and equipped force of 75 paid and professional firefighters in a rapidly growing town.
It was a poignant good-bye to a man only 53, made more so by the tributes and ceremonies organized by the Wake Forest department.
Wake Forest firemen in dress blues stood at attention at Keith’s casket during the visitation Saturday evening and helped the 650 people who came to sympathize with the family. Despite a request to send contributions to a memorial fund in Keith’s name in lieu of flowers, the reception rooms were filled with flowers. Keith’s turnout gear was near the casket, as was his white leather chief’s hat.
“He was the finest man I know,” one person whispered.
Area firefighters and rescue personnel filled a third of Binkley Chapel Sunday afternoon for the funeral, marching in just before the service began. The Rev. Jim Dyer, who officiated, read from Keith’s cards to his wife, Phyllis, cards she had saved since they were married. They marked their 28th anniversary on July 25 in the hospital.
Their daughter, Nichole, who married James Mathis on July 10 in a ceremony her father could not attend, read the poem she wrote to her father on July 24. Keith died of cancer Thursday, July 29.
At the close of the service, the pallbearers carried the flag-draped casket to a pumper truck, Engine 63, which served as its bier for the short journey from North Avenue down Stadium Drive to Pine Forest Memorial Gardens for the graveside ceremony. Four Wake Forest firemen knelt on the truck by the casket, and the truck was flanked by Wake Forest firemen led by a color guard and bagpiper.
Cars filled with family members and ranks of firefighters and rescue personnel, 200 strong, followed.
Fire trucks lined the route, and at the beginning and end the procession went under arches formed by aerial ladders draped with black flags.
Hallie Arrington Hearn looked at the Engine 63 across the street before the funeral and thought about her grandfather, Thomas A. Arrington, the town’s first fire chief. She thought he would be looking down and saying to Jimmy, “You did good.”
Over the weekend, black bunting was draped over the doors at the two fire stations, shrouded the sign at the Elm Avenue station and stretched over Keith’s white chief’s vehicle.
It was a fitting tribute to a man who only wanted to be a fire chief.
“That was Jimmy’s life, that department,” Stanley Denton said. “It was not just a job for him.
“I think Jimmy was the chief in the right place at the right time,” Denton said. “He realized Wake Forest was not just the little one-fire-truck town it had been.”
Denton joined the department about the same time Keith did, in 1970. “There were four or five of us young guys that got on right about the same time. We were the first young ones on there, the young hot-heads.” Others who joined at that time along with Keith and Denton were Randall Cooper, who now shares acting chief duties with Clifton Keith, and Ed Joyner.
Keith had a family tradition of firefighting. His grandfather, Frank R. Keith, was fire chief in the 1940s and 1950s, and his father, Bruce J. Keith, was chief in the 1970s. His cousin, Clifton Keith, is a veteran volunteer. An uncle, Raymond Keith, fought fires for 40 years, and Keith’s sister, Patricia, is married to Gary Sullivan, also a veteran Wake Forest firefighter.
Keith also had a family tradition of service, based both in the Wake Forest United Methodist Church and in the family business, Keith’s Super Market, which his grandfather founded. It was first on South White Street, but it burned on a bitterly icy night in 1961. Bruce Keith built a new store on Brooks Street, now the site for The Forks Cafeteria.
After graduating from Wake Forest-Rolesville High School, Jimmy Keith attended East Carolina University for two years and then returned home to join his parents in the family store.
At that time, there were three fire departments in town: the Wake Forest town department funded by the town, the all-black Station #2 on Taylor Street funded less generously by the town and the Wake Forest Rural Fire Department which was funded by a fire tax on property outside of town and in the Wakette Fire District. The two white stations stood side by side on South White Street – now the chamber of commerce building and the Walters-Williams building – and had identical rosters.
In the 1980s, the board of directors for the rural department saw that the town would grow into and diminish the rural fire district. The department incorporated and began to contract with both the town and the county to provide fire protection.
The new Wake Forest Fire Department built and moved to the Elm Avenue station in 1983. “Donnie Hight was the chief then, but Jimmy was in charge of the building committee,” Denton said. “That was when they still had the store up there and he had the time.”
Keith was elected chief of the department in 1987, then an unpaid position, and he began his annual quest to get enough funding from the town and the county to buy the trucks and equipment and later to pay the firemen to be able to properly protect the people in the town and fire district.
His standing with the men was demonstrated in 1992 when he received the Lewis B. Nuckles award, an honor not usually given a chief.
After Keith’s Super Market closed in 1993, Keith became a manager at Harris Teeter grocery stores and began to receive a small salary for his job as chief. It was not until January of 2003 that he became the department’s first full-time paid chief.
During his watch, the department grew to a staff of 75, 31 of them paid firefighters and the rest volunteers. At first, Cooper said, the paid firefighters were only at the station during the day, five days a week, but that soon changed, along with the inception of the First Responder program, to 24-hour coverage by paid personnel.
“He had a tough job, one of the toughest jobs, to integrate the volunteers and the paid,” Denton said. “That wasn’t an easy task, but Jimmy had the knack.”
The department built and opened its second station five years ago and is about to purchase land for a third station.
After years of presenting the department’s needs, always buttressed with facts, Keith won the town’s approval for 10 cents of the property tax for the fire department’s contract for the 2004-05 fiscal year.
Part of that money will go to the purchase of the department’s first aerial truck, although Cooper said that has been put on hold for the time being. Keith was on the truck selection committee, Lyman Franklin, chairman of the department’s board of directors, said.
“We lost a good friend,” Franklin said, but the pressure of an organization with a $1.5 million budget demands they find a new chief soon. Franklin said the board appointed a four-person committee when it met last week, but a decision has not been made whether to widely advertise the position. “I hope to be able to reach down and get someone from our own department,” Franklin said, a versatile person, a good PR person, an administrator and a boss.
A complete list of all the fire departments that sent trucks and representatives to the funeral is not available. Cooper said they delegated responsibility for tasks such as recording that information to other departments and had not been able to assemble it. Some of the departments were Fuquay-Varina, Rolesville, Youngsville, Stony Hill, Falls, Wake New Hope, Bay Leaf, Brassfield, Swift Creek, Wendell, Wake County Fire Safety, Wake County EMS, Zebulon, Western Wake, Creedmoor, Eastern Wake and Raleigh.
One vehicle in the funeral procession bore the name F.D.N.Y. along with the words North Carolina Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
Jim Poindexter, a volunteer with the Clayton Fire Department, said Tar Heel firefighters held a “fill the boot” campaign after 9/11, raising funds for their brothers in New York City. When they learned that few people in New York had cars and it was difficult for families to get to the funerals of the 343 firefighters, the North Carolina firemen bought four 15-passenger Ford Club Wagons and sent them to the city. After all the funerals, New York sent one back to North Carolina, complete with a bullet hole in the back near the license plate caused by a stray bullet. It is used by the foundation to help the families when firefighters die. Sunday Poindexter was ferrying Wake Forest firefighters to the seminary campus and running other errands.
August 4, 2004: Planners approve Ammons’ Heritage North
The Wake Forest Planning Board Tuesday night approved the site plan for Heritage North, a 387-home subdivision just north of Heritage Wake Forest planned by Andy Ammons.
The 161-acre tract is about half of the 310-acre Dameron land lying east of Jones Dairy Road, mostly south of the N.C. 98 bypass and north of Heritage.
Key to the development of Heritage North and the rest of the Dameron property, which is zoned for multi-family and retail use, is permission for more than 50 building permits a year, the cap the town board imposed in 2001 to conserve the town’s water supply.
- Barker and Christopher Dameron will ask the town board on Aug. 17 for 200 building permits a year. They say they need those to generate the cash flow to build Heritage Lake Road from Heritage Wake Forest to the bypass and a large portion of Friendship Chapel Road that will eventually extend from South Main Street to Jones Dairy Road.
Heritage North will not be included in the contract that Ammons negotiated with the town in 1999 in which he is now assured 400,000 gallons of water a day for Heritage Wake Forest.
Although no one spoke to oppose the request, town resident Stephen Stoller, who regularly attends the planning and town board meetings, asked how long it would take to build all the homes. Four to five years, Ammons said.
Stoller said he was also concerned about the adequacy of the water supply for this development and all the town. “It seems to be putting a bit of strain on the available water.”
He also asked if there has been any discussion about changing some requirements in the R-10 and R-8 zoning categories so that developers will not have to request R-5 zoning to get the setback and side yard flexibility.
Planning Director Chip Russell said he will bring several zoning amendments to the planning board, perhaps for next month’s meeting.
Planning board members Frank Drake and Kim Parker voted against approving the site plan. Chairman Bob Hill was absent.
The board also approved a change in the site plan for Heritage Heights, which was originally approved in December of last year. With the plans for Heritage North, Ammons was able to change the plans for Heritage Heights to increase the size from 20 to 22.6 acres, increase the lots from 39 homes to 49 and increase the road connections.
Both Heritage North and Heights are zoned R-5, a minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet, but the lots in Heritage North average over 12,000 square feet and those in Heritage Heights are 16,552 on average.
The board also approved the development plan for the Capital Commerce Office Center, a complex of nine one-story office buildings on the south side of Capcom Avenue owned by Edd K. Roberts of Raleigh.
A rezoning request for the Howard Cash property along South Main Street was withdrawn before the meeting. Russell said the applicant had decided to present a plan along with the request.
The meeting lasted about 40 minutes, one of the shortest in recent history, but Russell warned the members they would face a much longer agenda in September.
August 3, 2005: Road building all over town
A contract for the roundabout at the seminary – where South Main Street (U.S. 1-A) meets South Avenue (N.C. 98) – could have been awarded to the successful low bidder Tuesday night at a continued town board meeting. However, Town Manager Mark Williams said there was a holdup with approval from the state Department of Transportation. The contract should be awarded at the board’s Aug. 16 meeting.
The project, which is being planned and constructed by the town with about $600,000 reimbursement from DOT, calls for the roundabout to replace the blinking traffic signal. Once that work is complete, DOT plans to mill out asphalt and resurface U.S. 1-A from the bypass, around the campus and up North Main Street to Harris Road. By that time, DOT should have completed a delayed project, that of reworking storm drains and resetting curbs along North Main.
The second portion of the N.C. 98 bypass is so far ahead of schedule it may open this fall, a year ahead of time.
Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell was happy to pass along the good news on July 12, news that means traffic can go from Capital Boulevard to the east side of Wake Forest at Jones Dairy Road (or vice versa) without traveling on South Main Street.
However, O’Donnell said, “Two-thirds of a bypass is not terribly useful.”
Right now, DOT does not plan to award the bids for the third portion – the part from Capital Boulevard to Thompson Mill Road – until Oct. 1 of 2007. He said he had no idea whether DOT plans to move up that date in light of the early opening of the second section.
According to Wally Bowman, an engineer with DOT District 5 in Durham, purchase of right-of-way for the third section began this year and construction is scheduled to begin in 2007.
That third portion includes a great deal of work at the western end to relocate and widen Falls of the Neuse Road to the east and change the connection between Thompson Mill Road and the bypass. One existing section of N.C. 98 will be abandoned. A map showing the changes is available for view at the town planning department on Brooks Street.
There is also good news about the widening of South Main Street (U.S. 1-A) from Capital to Ligon Mill Road. O’Donnell said the project is on schedule and on track to be complete at the end of August. Once the widening is complete, DOT plans to send in a contractor to mill out old asphalt, fill the holes and resurface the street from Capital to the bypass.
O’Donnell said the Franklin Street extension from East Holding Avenue to the bypass may open in late July to early August. The state Division of Water Quality has approved the road’s intrusion into part of the Neuse River buffer as it crosses an unnamed tributary of Smith Creek, and the final piece of approval lies with the Land Quality division, which must approve a stormwater control device.
This summer there should also be some work on Stadium Drive where the town, with DOT reimbursement, will widen the road on the south side to smooth out and add curb and gutter in the area opposite Pine Forest Memorial Gardens. DOT has delayed replacing and widening the bridge over Richland Creek on Stadium until 2006.
Finally, O’Donnell said the town staff will soon begin work on the bond projects approved this fall. Wake Forest voters overwhelmingly backed the $9.5 million in road and street improvements, including widening South Main to five lanes from Rogers Road to Forbes Road, widening Stadium Drive to three lanes from Rock Springs Road to Capital Boulevard, two roundabouts on South Franklin Street, part of the North Loop including a bridge over the CSX railroad line and a sidewalk along North White Street from Juniper to the Flaherty Park Community Center.
August 2, 2006: House saved but neighbors disappointed
The people who live in the Clearsprings subdivision on Chalks Road wanted to see larger lot sizes in the proposed Majestic Oaks subdivision planned by Willfair Properties next door and some kind of help to prevent traffic from speeding along the three-quarters of a mile of Clearsprings Drive.
They were disappointed by the Wake Forest Planning Board’s response, which was a sympathetic ear but a 6 to 1 recommendation to approve the requested conditional use R-8 zoning and connect Clearsprings Drive from Rogers Road to Chalks Road.
The clear winner was the Allen and Mary Freeman house, rescued by the statements of local lawyer Kathryn Drake, chairman of the Capital Area Preservation board. The planning board stipulated no building permits will be issued for the land the house and its associated buildings stand on while Drake works to find a way to permanently preserve the house.
Clearsprings is a county subdivision zoned R-30 with septic tanks, a community water system and lots that range from an acre to more than two. Its only access is Clearsprings Drive, which is 18 feet wide.
If the town board approves the rezoning and master plan on Aug. 15, that narrow street will be connected to one 35 feet wide. As a result of neighborhood meetings the engineer, Mike Crowley of Crowley & Associates, has put in a roundabout to calm traffic, but neighbors said that will not be enough.
“I’m looking to prevent a problem,” Andy Martin said. He lives on the narrow street where there is barely enough room for cars to pass. He said he did not want to be the one to have to call when someone crashes into a tree or hits a neighbor child.
As Martin and others pointed out, Clearsprings Road at Rogers will connect to a street in the future Heritage South. Children in that subdivision will be assigned to Jones Dairy Elementary School and Clearsprings will be the most convenient cut-through to Chalks and Jones Dairy roads.
Drivers also might want to use that road instead of Marshall Farm Road, which also connects to Chalks Road, because Marshall Farm has speed tables and what is still considered a dangerous intersection at Rogers Road at the top of a hill. Even though the hill was recently cut down, board member Peter Thibodeau said people who live in the area feel they “take their lives in their hands making a left turn off Rogers.”
The future Clearsprings Drive will meet Rogers at the top of a much smaller hill to the east, an area with better sight distance.
Clearsprings in the existing subdivision will not have speed tables or three-way stop signs at the side roads because the state Department of Transportation will not allow them. DOT’s reasoning, quoted from the planning department’s analysis, is that three-way stops confuse motorists, leading to accidents, and there is no history of accidents at those intersections. If speed tables are installed, DOT, which maintains the road, said it would remove them because of complaints about vehicle damage and because it cannot plow snow over them.
David Williams, Willfair’s president, said they had offered to pay for the speed tables and stop signs.
The other contentious bone for Clearsprings residents is the disparity between the size of their lots and those in the planned subdivision, even though Crowley has increased the adjoining lot sizes to 15,000 square feet.
Jay Hoy said his family moved to Clearsprings “because its country living in the city.” Hoy said even those larger lot sizes are not enough and said he would prefer they be half-acre lots. “This development (Majestic Oaks) should be twenty to thirty lots to make it flow and look like it should.”
The planned subdivision will have 60 single-family lots – reduced from the original 65 – with homes that begin at 2,500 square feet and cost $325,000 and up.
Hoy and Martin were the spokesmen for the 35 or so neighbors who came to the public hearing, and Hoy said there were more who could not attend. Danny R. Lineberry sent a three-page letter to Mayor Vivian Jones expressing his opposition, and Alister and Linda Score sent an e-mail to the planning department asking the planning and town boards to reject the rezoning.
The property, 18.75 acres with three owners, is now in the county’s jurisdiction. The town board has accepted a request for annexation and will consider that along with the rezoning and master plan on Aug. 15.
Board member Steve Stoller said he was concerned about the lack of transition between the large lots in Clearsprings and those planned, and member Kim Parker said he was very torn about the road issue.
Thibodeau, who later voted against the recommendation, raised questions about the different road widths, the availability of an alternate source for lawn irrigation – the developers have agreed not to use the town’s water – and the lack of open space. Planning Director Chip Russell said they could capture rainwater or dig a well and will be using a drought-resistant grass like Bermuda or zoysia. For smaller subdivisions such as this with no Neuse River buffer or greenway nearby, planner Chad Sary said, the town charges a recreation fee in lieu of the open space.
Willfair will also assure the builders will install water-saving appliances in the homes.
The vote was 6 to 1 because Stoller left early to pick up his wife at the airport and members Speed Massenburg and Michael Martin were absent. The other board members are chairman Bob Hill, vice chairman Alphonza Merritt, Ward Marotti, Tom Cornett, Chris Kaeberlein, Parker and Thibodeau.
In the only other business, the board quickly approved the master plan for the Northern Wake Regional Center to be built by Wake County. It will be constructed between the post office and the library almost directly across from the short stub of Brooks Street. The plan calls for a reconfigured parking lot for the library, which will still have room to expand to the south.
August 2, 2006: Heritage disappearing as old houses are destroyed
The Freeman house on Rogers Road may be saved, but at least one even more historic Wake County house was bulldozed in recent weeks.
As Kathryn Drake, local lawyer and chairman of the Capital Area Preservation board, told the planning board Tuesday night, “The fact that it is in that book (Kelly Lally’s ‘The Historic Architecture of Wake County’) means its worthy of preservation.”
Lally’s book, published in 1994, included both the Allen and Mary Freeman house and the older John and Nancy Perry house, one of the few examples of Georgian architecture that had been left in the county.
Built just about 200 years ago, the Perry house was bulldozed recently, reportedly after the owner received a call from Capital Area Preservation about preserving the house.
What was lost was a two-story home with its original wrap-around porch, 6-foot mantelpieces, double wainscoting and sections of the original weatherboard siding with rosehead nails. Behind it was a contemporary kitchen.
John Perry, who moved from Franklin County and bought about 1,500 acres in what is now the Riley Hill section south of Rolesville, probably built the house around 1805. In the 1850 Census, he was listed as owning 12 slaves. By that time, he had moved his family to another house, but the original house remained in the family’s ownership until 1881.
The new owner sold the house and 88 acres to Jasper Perry in 1912, who had a strong connection to the property because his father, Fagan, had been a slave there. The old Georgian house passed out of the hands of the Jasper Perry family later in the 1900s. Jasper’s brother, Guyon, bought the adjoining Perry farm in 1914, and his descendents still owns it.
The Freeman house does not have such a wealth of architectural interest or family history, but it is a good example of the kind of farmhouse that was built in the early 1800s. Such houses were once “common as dirt,” Drake said, but are disappearing almost as fast as subdivisions gobble up Wake County land.
It has, Lally’s book says, Greek Revival details, six-over-six sash windows and ashlar (dressed stone) chimneys. The building behind the house also has ashlar chimneys, and there is a tobacco barn farther back.
Greg Costa, a relative who lives next door, said Clellie, his stepmother, told him that smaller building had been a kitchen. “She would be very, very upset to see it (the house) destroyed. There is a lot of history in that house, and it would be a shame to see it destroyed.”
In 1850, the Freemans owned 900 acres and 24 slaves, and the farm produced eight bales of cotton and 1,500 barrels of corn among other crops
The Freeman family cemetery is across Rogers Road in the future Heritage South subdivision, but one of the conditions of the rezoning for the land was that the cemetery would be left untouched. Freeman relatives maintain the cemetery.
Todd Allen, who owns the house and two acres around it because his wife is distantly related to the Freemans, said he had been told it would cost $300,000 to renovate the house “because of the damage done to the home in the fifties.” (It was still being used as a home in the 1970s.) It had been flooded, the main support beam had been ruined and there were termites up into the second story, Allen said. It is now hidden behind shrubbery and surrounded by a chain-link fence.
Allen was ready to sell the material in the house to someone who wanted to reuse it in new buildings or renovations.
Drake said there were many ways CAP to help preserve the house and buildings. “We’ve taken donations of houses. Just give us some time. There are many ways to skin a cat. There is always some fool out there who will buy most any house.”
At that, her husband, Commissioner Frank Drake, hid his head. The couple purchased, moved and restored the William Thompson house that had stood on Falls of the Neuse Road, and they earlier renovated their home on North Main. When planning board member Kim Parker suggested a delay in the overall property rezoning because “it might be beneficial for the Drakes and whoever else might want to get involved” in saving the Freemen house, Frank Drake said, “This is one person in this world who cannot buy this house.”
August 2, 2006: Meeting raised issues about residents’ perceptions
“There were kind of eye-raising issues that came up,” Commissioner Stephen Barrington said Tuesday night during the town board’s work session, referring to the minutes from the May meeting the Human Relations Council held at the Alston-Massenburg Center.
“One was transportation, and there was also at least one comment made asking if there was any sort of police profiling going on at the present time and a perceived [feeling] that the town board is indifferent to that part of town.”
Barrington said these beliefs on the part of residents in the northeast part of town may be actual or perceived, but either way if that is what is perceived, “that’s the reality.”
Barrington said he would recommend the Human Relations Council help set up a meeting between the town board and the residents in the Alston-Massenburg Center to help the commissioners understand the issues and begin communicating with the residents.
“If there’s an unmet need, I want to hear about it,” Commissioner Frank Drake said.
Mitchell Lawson, chairman of the HRC, was in the meeting room and was asked his opinion.
Lawson said the HRC is in the midst of planning Good Neighbor Day on Sept. 17. “It’s our largest event for the year. It will bring diverse sections of the town together to commingle, interact. It might be a good forum for the board to attend this function and make yourselves available to the town citizens in a light kind of atmosphere. These types of issues are better addressed in that kind of atmosphere and background.”
“I am sure the board will be happy to be there,” Mayor Vivian Jones said, “but I wonder if addressing some of these things … in the past Good Neighbor Day has been more of a fun time, a casual time. Maybe if serious issues are going to be discussed it should be done at a time when it won’t mess up the fun.”
Good Neighbor Day could be a time, Commissioner Velma Boyd-Lawson said, “to set the stage to ease some of the dialogue.”
The matter was left that Lawson and Barrington would work out a time for a town hall meeting with residents of the northeast part of town.
The only agenda items for the work session were to approve the Aug. 15 agenda and interview candidates for the Historic Preservation Commission and HRC. The candidates had left before the discussion about the perceptions in the northeast area.
Because Gail Williams had withdrawn her application, the only candidate for a vacant seat on the Historic Preservation Commission was John Mills, a retired patent attorney who lives on Durham Road. Mills said his family has a long connection with the historic area on North Main Street, he grew up in a bungalow there and he is the fourth generation of the Mills family to live in the area.
There are three candidates for two vacant seats on the HRC: Franc DiBari of 10113 San Remo Place, Stephanie M. Jenny of 7016 Shady Glen Lane and Karen Claggett of 721 Richland Bluff Court.
Claggett is a human resources professional who moved to town a little over five years ago with her husband. She said she applied to the HRC board because “it sounds a lot like what I do in corporate life.
DiBari owns DiBari & Associates, a professional recruiting company. Although new to town, he has lived in Wake County five years. “I’ve always been the voice of the person who doesn’t stand up for himself.”
Jenny, who has a law degree from Loyola University, said she enjoyed her experience on the greenways board and thought the chance to serve on the HRC would be “a great opportunity.” When she took her children to downtown Wake Forest, she saw smiling faces and friendly people, a very different experience from that in their former home, a Raleigh subdivision.
The commissioners will vote on the candidates at the Aug. 15 meeting.
August 1, 2007: South Brick House will be a home
For more than a year, people interested in the history of Wake Forest have worried and fretted about the fate of the South Brick House because there was a for sale sign in front.
The house is the last legacy of the three original Wake Forest College buildings and is 169 years old.
But a few weeks ago, everyone could heave a sigh of relief and Mayor Vivian Jones could disband her ad hoc group that had been trying to find a use and a buyer for the house.
Retired Navy pilot and Wake Forest native Jim Cooke and his wife, Alexis, plan to buy the house and live there. Jim is going into the family business in two senses of the phrase. “I’m coming back to work with the family business, and we’re trying to raise a family there. We’re moving back to Wake Forest and I plan it will be for the rest of my life.” The family business is Utility Service Agency on North Main Street.
The closing will not be until the end of August, but Jim and Alexis are talking with architects, historic preservation experts, the town and lots of others about their plans. “Everybody seems to like what we’re planning.
“We’re going to keep everything the same, just add bathrooms and some AC.” Jim said they plan to build on top of the 1940s kitchen addition for a master bathroom and stairs and add a washer and dryer. They will also need to repair the slate roof, damaged during Hurricane Fran, as well as a lot of painting and patching. “We’ve got some work ahead of us.”
He is an old house fan “I love ‘em.” His father, David Cooke, grew up in a pre-Revolutionary log house, and Jim grew up in the 1803 Hartsfield house in Wake Forest. “I’ve always been attracted to old houses and my wife is as well,” Jim said. He has already renovated two 1920s houses in Richmond, Va., where they live now.
After the college was chartered, replacing the original plan for an agricultural institute, the college trustees hired Captain John Berry, a Hillsborough architect and contractor, to build the first college building. Berry submitted a plan; the trustees substituted another and hired him anyway. Berry used his own slaves and local clay to put up the three-story building in 1836 and 1837 that became known as “the College building” and “Old Main.” It burned to the ground, the victim of arson, in 1933.
While the college building was under construction, two trustees, C.W. Skinner and Amos J. Battle, proposed they would spend their own money, not to exceed $3,000 each and to reimbursed, for Berry to build two identical houses for professors, each 36 feet long and 32 feet wide. When they were complete in 1838, they became known as the North Brick House (razed to make way for the vacant dormitory that stands at the intersection of Front Street and North Avenue) and the South Brick House, which still stands at 112 E. South Ave., surrounded by a creamy picket fence.
The college retained ownership of the houses for a time. The South Brick House and two lots were sold to an S.S. Biddle in 1855 for $2,000. The college was always strapped for money. At that time, the total lot for the house stretched the length of the first block of South Main Street.
Although symmetrical in outward appearance, the interior of the house is not. Instead, it is in the shape of Greek key. The front door opens into a front hall or parlor that stretches across the front to the left and ends at the right with a door to the staircase to the second floor, which crosses the window to the right of the front door.
It had a varied history and many owners during the years. At one point – or perhaps several – the owner rented rooms to college students and athletes, among them Arnold Palmer.
Dr. Edgar E. Folk, English and journalism professor, and his wife, Minta, nee Holding, bought the house in 1949. Mrs. Folk, who worked in the college library at that time, was a daughter of T.E. Holding and grew up in the spacious Queen Anne house next door that he had built. Her sister, Leila Aycock, lived in the Holding house.
The Folks tore down the wide front porch and replaced it with a classic pillared Green Revival porch similar to the original porch. Mrs. Folk papered the unusual front hall or parlor with a mural and filled the house with antiques.
When the college moved to Winston-Salem in 1956, Folk and Dr. A.C. Reid maintained their Wake Forest homes, sharing an apartment during the week and returning home on the weekends. Mrs. Folk became a well-known dealer in antiques with a shop in town.
Their grandson owns the house but lives in Maryland with no interest in living in Wake Forest, and no other family member wants to purchase it.
August 1, 2007: New coffee shop planned in downtown
A coffee shop with ice cream and desserts and very possibly a wine bar with jazz and other attractions are coming soon to downtown Wake Forest.
Bob and Elizabeth Johnson have just purchased the building at 156 and 158 S. White St., a building that appears to be two separate structures but is just one. Old-timers will remember it was Western Auto run by the late Paul Brixhoff. For three decades, the 158 address has been Solid Sounds, and for several years the 156 address was Not Just for Kids Bookstore, but it has been largely empty since then. The Johnsons, who own a number of other downtown buildings, bought the property in early July for $580,000, according to the Wake County property listings.
Albert Barneto will be the tenant in the former bookstore, where he plans to open the coffee shop on the lower level, and maybe a wine bar above. “We’re pretty sure we’re going to do that.”
He’s working with an interior designer for the coffee shop, getting the necessary permits, hiring a contractor to do the renovations, and he hopes to open Sept. 15 “in a perfect world.”
Barneto knows a lot about operating a restaurant since he owned a Kentucky Fried Chicken in California for 15 years and worked there for five years before and he operates a service for retailers and other businesses called CustomerTrend. It provides help with the hiring process for the food service industry, secret or mystery shoppers who evaluate customer service and other services. Barneto provides the secret shoppers for the Johnson’s Cotton Company.
Barneto and his family recently moved to Wake Forest because “we wanted better education, a better life.” He has a 5-year-old beginning kindergarten and a 15-year-old beginning high school, and he’s enthusiastic about Wake Forest. “The schools are better, the people talk to you.”
He is also full of praise for Tina Archer, the executive director for the Downtown Revitalization Corporation. “She’s very proactive. If I’ve got a question for the [Wake Forest] Planning Department, she’ll get it for me.” Archer also arranged a meeting for Barneto with someone from the City of Raleigh’s water department to discuss the type of grease trap he will need. “We got what we needed.”
Barneto wants his new business to “be definitely a go-to place” with a lot of entertainment drawing people into the downtown. “There’s nothing going on there sometimes at night.”
Jimmy “JR” Holloway has operated Solid Sounds for 30 years. He and Elizabeth Johnson have agreed to a six-month lease at his present $700 rent, but he does not want to pay more and Johnson says, “We need to have an increase in rent to get an even cash flow on the building. We want him to have ample time to make a good decision for himself and his business, but at the same time we have made a significant investment and need to make decision that will be good for us and downtown in the long run. The building is in need of renovations and updating that cannot be done while occupied.”
Johnson said she and her husband have offered other comparable spaces in downtown at his present rent, “but so far he has not been interested in considering.”
Tuesday Holloway said he cannot afford the higher rent for his current location and he is very interested in an offer from Dorothy Arrington, who owns the building two doors away that is occupied by the Wake Forest School of Fine Arts.
The school of dance is planning to move to a shopping center, Holloway said, and Arrington has offered him the space at the same rent he is paying now.
August 7, 2008: Town can d little about golf course
Although they went through the town staff’s report about Wake Forest Golf Club carefully, Tuesday night the commissioners finally decided there was little they could do except require owner Joe Young to drain the pool and ask him to cut the grass on the portion fronting on Capital Boulevard.
“All these people are sitting here waiting for us to come up with a magic wand, and we don’t have a magic wand. We can’t do anything,” Commissioner Margaret Stinnett said, gesturing to the 20 golf course neighbors in the meeting room.
“Except keep it from being developed,” her neighbor on the town board’s dais, Commissioner Frank Drake, said.
Commissioner Chris Kaeberlein voiced the same complaint. “I don’t know what we can do legally. The conditions [for the planned unit development that established the course as open space] are written assuming everything goes as planned. There is nothing on the back end if you’re not going to do it as we expected.”
The PUD was approved by the then-town commissioners in 1999, allowing Young to sell the land for two townhouse developments. Fairway Villas was built; only two of the 12 lots for Clubhouse Villas have been built and Town Manager Mark Williams said the bank has reclaimed the property. In earlier years after he purchased the course that was built in the late 1960s, Young sold the land for Country Club Downs and Riverstone, and all the homebuyers were assured their properties would appreciate because they could be marketed as golf course homes.
One assurance the neighbors could take from the meeting was that the sitting town commissioners intend to keep the 147-acre course as open space, whether or not it is an operational golf course.
“It is guaranteed open space. It could be meadows or pasture, just not built on,” Drake said, adding that the town is not the guarantor of the golf course operation.
“We can’t force somebody to operate a particular use on a particular property,” as Commissioner Peter Thibodeau phrased it.
Thibodeau and the other commissioners closely questioned when the neglected course reaches “the tipping point” to become a public health and safety danger, and there was no easy answer. Williams said the town board would have to make a finding that the property had reached that level. “That sounds like something that could be easily challenged and challenged over a period of time,” Thibodeau said.
Town attorney Eric Vernon agreed proving the substantive claim of danger in court could be challenged. “Did we make a reasonable assessment of the threat to public health and safety?”
One part of the course is in better shape, the portion of Horse Creek that flows through it, because there is no or little human use along its banks and no chemicals from the greens and fairways are reaching it. Commissioner Anne Hines said she had been told beavers had moved in and are building a dam, leading her informant to worry about flooding.
“They have to get somebody from wildlife to trap them and move them,” Stinnett said. But they are not an endangered species, Hines said, “so they will not move them. They will trap them and eradicate them.” And it has to be the property owner who asks the state Wildlife Service to trap the beavers, Williams said.
Some of the golf course neighbors very much want the town to purchase the course and operate it have suggested both the Goldsboro course and one in High Point.
“We have not found one (city-operated golf course) that is not heavily subsidized and losing money,” Mayor Vivian Jones said. The town staff investigated the Goldsboro course and found it lost $380,000 last year, the smallest deficit to date.
The day after someone told Jones about the High Point course she was at a meeting which an official from High Point also attended. The city has two golf courses. “The one around the lake actually does have more revenue than they use in operations, but he did not believe that included capital improvements to the course.”
Thibodeau said the professionals use extremely complicated formulas to determine whether or not a golf course will be financially successful. There is a lot of stiff competition among courses locally, he added.
Earlier he had said the course was “a business that went under.” In the recent past, Thibodeau said, “more courses have closed than opened. The whole industry is on a downward trend.”
Although some of the neighbors had suggested the town apply for Wake County Open Space bond funds, Stinnett and others said the money is only available for open space and very passive recreation. “You could put greenways on it. It cannot be any kind of active recreation,” Williams said.
The conclusion was the town will require Young to drain the pool and keep it drained, ask him to cut the grass that is a visible eyesore along Capital Boulevard, make sure there are regular fire, health and safety inspections.
The course is, as was said several times, private property. Homeowners who have easements on the course were advised in the written report to consult with a lawyer.
The 2008 tax bills Young just received for the course total $76,975.92 according to the Wake County web site.
August 7, 2008: Sewer, homes already in Falls Lake watershed
One of the bumpy parts of the water/sewer merger in which the City of Raleigh owns the Wake Forest utilities is how and when the city will extend water and sewer lines.
The city is holding up approval of new lines into Franklin County for a proposed subdivision on land that was once ZooFauna, and this summer Raleigh City Manager Russell Allen sent a letter to Wake Forest Town Manager Mark Williams saying the city disapproved of the town’s annexation of 52 acres along Jenkins Road.
The issue, Russell said in his letter, is the protection of the Falls Lake watershed. “The City of Raleigh has a long standing police and agreements related to the protection of existing water supply watersheds. The annexation of the subject property and subsequent extension of public water and sanitary sewers would be inconsistent with Raleigh’s Falls Lake watershed protection policy.”
Russell’s letter was dated July 7, and the Wake Forest commissioners approved the Jenkins Road annexation on July 15 during their regular meeting. At that time, Williams said the city’s lawyers had agreed the city would have to agree with the extension under the terms of the merger.
One of the considerations is that there is already water and sewer next to the land, and another is that there is groundwater contamination there from the TCE contamination on the former Parker-Hannifin site.
Water and sewer were extended along Jenkins in 1993 when planning board chairman Bob Hill, who was then a town commissioner, built a new house on the west side of Horse Creek and asked for his home and land to be annexed so that he could continue to serve and avoid contaminated well water from the TCE.
At about the same time Joe Young sold some of the Wake Forest Golf Club land for Country Club Downs on Purnell Road and the homes were built with watershed overlay zoning, conditional use R-15. Later in the 1990s, Fairlake subdivision was built west of Country Club Downs with watershed overlay zoning, conditional use R-20.
Both of these are in the Horse Creek watershed as is Riverstone subdivision close to the east bank of Horse Creek. It was built in the late 1990s, early 2000s.
All of the subdivisions have town water and sewer as does the State Employees Credit Union at the top of the ridge where Capital Boulevard runs.
The town has not yet rezoned the 52 acres on Jenkins Road that is owned by the E. Hunt III LLC, a Holding family corporation. The land is valued at $1,445,262.
