Plans to provide high speed fiber cable internet to homes and businesses in Wake Forest are continuing, though slower than originally heralded.
RST, which is based in Shelby, stopped installation last fall while waiting for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and is now finishing work in other areas while make sure it has the finances to construct the Wake Forest network.
But it has hired Dan Holt, a member of the town’s Technology Advisory Board, an employee of 3Phoenix and the person who beat the drums electronically and in person to get some firm interested in high-speed service in town. Holt has been hired to build the servers for RST. According to the information in the packet for the town board agenda, he will work 40 per month for RST and help with the firm’s marketing campaign in town.
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On Monday, Feb. 2, the Wake Forest Fire Department will conduct training exercises and a live burn in the small house on Brooks Street that most recently has been used as the town planning department’s extra office space, “the planning cottage.” The activities will take the entire day, from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the street will be closed while the training and the burn are underway.
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The town is now trying to get Duke Energy Progress to help pay for the purchase of two properties along Smith Creek that will provide protection to the endangered stream and passive recreation. The two properties are a tract on the creek owned by Dr. William Hedrick and 128 acres north of Oak Grove Church Road in the headwaters for the Smith Creek Reservoir, part of the Traditions tract owned by the Ammons family. Both owners are willing to sell.
The Hedrick property will cost about $596,000, and last fall the town learned it would receive a Clean Water Management Trust Fund Grant of $289,622 toward the purchase.
The larger Traditions tract will cost about $3.6 million, and the same CWMTF grant will provide $529,920 toward the purchase.
The town is also applying to the Wake County Open Space Program and the state Parks and Recreation Trust Fund. Each would provide about 40 percent of the purchase price.
