After a two-month vacation – the Wake Forest Planning Board did not meet in August and September due to lack of business – on Tuesday night the members will face an agenda loaded with five public hearings that include a request for a bed and breakfast on Pearce Avenue and a new subdivision, the Woodlands at Traditions with 99 townhouses. It may be a long evening.
The Woodlands will be on a wooded 11.98 acres on Royal Mill Avenue which runs from Traditions Grande Boulevard to North White Street. The land is owned by Wheelock Street Capital headquartered in Greenwich, Conn., and Boston, Mass., which as WS-TWF also owns the residential part of the Holding Village subdivision and all of Traditions which has been built, more than 73 acres.
This will be a quasi-judicial hearing with sworn testimony. The zoning is residential mixed use, RMX, and backs up to J.B. Flaherty Park. There is only one entrance/exit. Assistant Planning Director Charlie Yokley said the planning staff recommends approval with four conditions, including dedication of easements and construction of 10 feet of a public asphalt greenway trail along Dunn Creek; a note about the closeness of the Wake Forest Police Department firing range be included in final plats; filing of an annexation request before approval of construction plans; and, compliance with design standards in the Unified Development Ordinance for roofs and eaves, building entrances, garages, façade design and materials for walls and roofs.
Aaron Daubenspeck, who lives at 409 Pearce Avenue, is asking for a special use permit to operate a bed and breakfast in his house and to use the house at 401 Pearce Avenue as storage with parking behind it. There would be seven bedrooms in the larger house plus his living quarters. Pearce runs parallel to Wait Avenue a block to the north, beginning where a short block of North Taylor Street meets the recently-rebuilt Caddell Street and extends into the Highgate subdivision, ending at Highgate Circle. The zoning is UR, urban residential, which allows a diverse mix of uses, and Senior Planner Jonathan Cooper recommends approval based on findings of fact. This too will be a quasi-judicial hearing.
A third quasi-judicial hearing will be held for an application by the McAdams Company to increase the number of commercial lots, the outparcels, at Gateway Commons shopping center, which is bounded by the N.C. 98 Bypass, Jones Dairy Road, Friendship Chapel Road and Heritage Lake Road. Gateway Commons was approved in 2007 on 12.95 acres. Cooper is recommending approval, listing only the conditions set in 2007.
The last two hearings will be legislative – anyone may speak without being sworn – and are requests by Wake Forest developer Jim Adams to rezone two parcels, 4.49 and 4.83 acres on Coach Lantern Avenue and Fairstone Road, respectively, from conditional use neighborhood business to conditional use residential mixed use. Both parcels are in the Stonegate at St. Andrews subdivision on Forestville Road. The Fairstone Road parcel fronts on Forestville Road.
The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. in the meeting chamber on the second floor of Wake Forest Town Hall. The town commissioners also hold their monthly work session that evening with theirs beginning at 5:30 p.m.
There are three quasi-judicial hearings in later planning board meetings, it was noted at the end of the agenda. These would be for another section of the Traditions subdivision; Crenshaw Corners, said to be a seven-lot commercial subdivision on 15 acres at the corner of Durham Road and the N.C. 98 Bypass; and, an outparcel at the Wake Forest Crossing shopping center, which may be the planned Tru Hotel, part of the Hilton chain.
