Brief Bits

There is nothing the Gazette editor enjoys more than chasing down any facts behind the rumors she hears, and this week there are two.

The first was from a reliable person saying surveyors had been at work in recent days all over the Heritage golf course and he surmised Heritage developer Andy Ammons was selling the course. Ammons responded to an email with a phone call to say no, he is not selling the golf course but he is refinancing it and had to have the survey to locate all the corners. Given the scores, probably hundreds of houses and lots that ring the course, it certainly provided a substantial amount of work for the surveyors.

The second rumor that is apparently circling through all of town is that the small prefab building at 149 East Holding Avenue is the first of 80 townhouses to be built on that lot. Well, no.

That building is for Tri-Area Ministry Food Pantry across the street and will be a storage building. It will have electricity – at least Wake Forest Power was installing a line last week – but apparently not water or sewer. The lot is 2 acres, not large enough for 80 townhouses. The land was purchased in March by ITAC 356 LLC, a South Carolina company with a Chapel Hill address that was incorporated in North Carolina in January of this year. The local address is on South Main Street, David M. Smoot IV’s home address. It was owned by Jim Adams until 2011 when the Bank of Hampton Roads in Virginia took title. There is no indication Tri-Area has purchased part of the 2 acres, but Wake County’s online records may not have been undated.

The 80-unit townhouse development, the Retreat @ Renaissance, was approved in 2013 on 11 acres as a needed infill housing project in the town’s Renaissance Area. Craig Briner with East Elm Partners, owner of the Renaissance Plaza small shopping center where the town’s Renaissance Centre, Brooks Street Bowl and Over the Falls Deli are located, was the developer.

The two-phase plan said Briner would build a street west from South Franklin Street to connect with the stub of Brooks Street off East Holding Avenue and complete Brooks. A unique feature would be the five live/work townhouses that would face Renaissance Plaza next to Over the Falls, with shops on the lowest level, homes on the two levels above. The projected start of the project was early in 2014. The only evidence on the ground happened a year ago or more when Briner or someone had the route for Brooks Street clear cut and bulldozed from its end near East Holding to the plaza but there has been no further onsite work.

Yokley said this week the project is “still an active plan. I do not know when further construction will begin.”

He explained further. “M/I Homes had a contract with East Elm Partners to purchase and develop the property.  That contract has expired.  The new interested developer has purchased the development plans from M/I Homes and is working on the details of that purchase and proposed development (that was the last update I heard from the engineer for the project).”

Please, send along all your rumors. Keep an editor employed.

* * * *

Have a deer problem in your yard? Noticed all the dead deer along town and area streets and roads? Getting your car repaired after a close deer encounter? The solution might be cougars.

As The New York Times reported Tuesday, studies have shown that cougars might help keep deer populations in check. “Laura R. Prugh, a wildlife scientist at the University of Washington; Sophie L. Gilbert, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Idaho; and several colleagues argue in the journal Conservation Letters that if eastern cougars returned to their historic range (which does include North Carolina), they could prevent 155 human deaths and 21,400 human injuries, and save $2.3 billion, over the course of 30 years.

“And although cougars do kill humans sometimes, the scientists estimated that number would be less than one per year, for a total of less than 30 lives lost, far less than the number of lives saved.”

Cougars might also help keep the coyote population in check.

* * * *

Candace Davis, the transportation planning manager in the Wake Forest Planning Department, just named and is working on agreements with seven design/engineering firms who will be selected to work on future designs for streets and greenways. The firms are AECOM, Mott MacDonald, Kimley-Horn, Stantec, Stewart, Summit and Parsons Brinckerhoff who will provide preliminary engineering, design and construction engineering inspection services on an on-call basis for three years.

The first two projects for these firms are the design of the operational improvements for Durham Road (N.C. 98 business) and Phase 2 of the Smith Creek Greenway. For Durham Road, the town already has $2.5 million award from federal and state funds for the right-of-way acquisition and construction.

The Smith Creek Greenway project would add 2.8 miles to the town’s system, linking the greenway at Burlington Mills Road to the Smith and Sanford Creek Greenway junction. For this project, the town has applied for a 2016 Clean Water Management Trust Fund grant which could be $520,000 to pay for easement and right-of-way acquisition. The town will hear this fall if it will receive the grant.

* * * *

Bet you sometimes wonder why street and road projects you hear about have not been completed. It is because projects along existing streets or through areas with a number of property owners have to obtain permission – easements or purchase of right-of-way – before any actual work can begin. And the design work had to be done first to identify where the project should go.

For example, Transportation Planning Manager Candace Davis was able to report in June that all nine properties to be affected by the Ligon Mill improvements have agreed to settlements which include minor adjustments to a driveway and an elevation as well as concerns about an irrigations system and site trees.

“There will be four lanes and a concrete median. The improvements for this section of Ligon Mill Road begin at US1A and end at the Walmart driveway. We’ll add bicycle lanes, sidewalks on both sides of the roadway and the traffic signal at the intersection of US1A and Ligon Mill Road will be upgraded to include a pedestrian phase,” Davis wrote in an email.

“We anticipate completing right-of-way acquisition this month. Since this project is federally funded, the right-of-way has to be certified by NCDOT. After it is certified we estimate starting construction during Spring 2017. The link to access project webpage is: http://www.wakeforestnc.gov/ligon-mill-roadway.aspx.”

On Stadium Drive, where the town plans major improvements including a roundabout at the intersection of Wingate Street, Stadium and North Avenue, there are 32 properties affected. Telics, the firm hired for the negotiations with the property owners, now has agreements and settlements with 27 owners.

Along Wait Avenue and West Oak, streets where the town plans sidewalks and trails for pedestrians – there are no provisions for pedestrians currently – Telics has been contacting property owners and anticipates all the necessary easements and right-of-way will be in hand by mid-August.

The good news is that the reconstruction of Caddell Street from Spring Street to Pearce Avenue is complete. It is still one-way only, Spring to Pearce.

If it appears that Davis has a heavy load, you will be happy to learn she hired an assistant in March, Planner John-Paul Zitta. “I’m in the process of training him now so that he can assist me with future LAPP (locally administered projects using mostly or all federal and state funds) and other funding applications. He wasn’t here when I developed the funding applications for any of the existing projects.”

* * * *

The Wake Forest Public Works Department has been tracking the amount of solid waste (garbage) and recycling (paper, plastic, cardboard, etc.) Republic Services picks up each week since the town began using the roll-out garbage and recycling carts in 2005. The totals have grown, of course, because the number of houses has grown in those 10 years, from 7,021 on average in 2006 to 11,474 currently. (2006 was the first full year for records of this kind.)

The average collections per household, though, have remained fairly static. Republic was collecting 125.57 pounds of garbage in 2006 which went up to 136.11 pounds the next year, dropped down to 125.2 in 2013 and is now 131.91, about the average.

The weight of recyclables has increased, from 32.59 pounds in 2006, a high of 43.15 pounds in 2010, and is now at 42.19 pounds. Republic sells the recyclable material to recoup some of its cost.

The cost of the garbage and recyclable collection is included in every homeowners’ property tax, which is 52 cents per $100 valuation. The change from monthly fees was instituted in 2008 because the town no longer was in charge of the water and sewer system and learning about new residents when they applied to be water and sewer customers. The new residents did not learn that they had to apply for the carts; the town did not know how to charge new residents for the collections. Also many homeowners saved money when the charge, 4 cents of the tax rate which was then 51 cents, went on their property tax bill.