One item not on the town board’s agenda Tuesday night was a settlement with downtown property owner Bob Johnson, who claims he has deeds – or a deed – to the land under fairly new asphalt between the block of buildings housing his Cotton Company and the B&W Hardware. The town says it is an extension of East Owen Avenue and acted as the owner by paving and improving the small area during the South White Streetscape project.
The matter was to go to court on Feb. 1, but then it was announced that the parties were reaching an agreement. Then first the matter was on the town board’s Feb. 16 agenda, but by meeting time it was off the agenda and listed as the topic for a closed session with two town attorneys.
Town Manager Kip Padgett was asked about the status of the settlement and replied, “The town is still in discussion with the other parties.” Does that mean another person or two or three have deeds too? We will see.
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That site work underway on a lot on Rogers Road, the first lot to the north when you turn off South Main Street, is for a new Rite-Aid drugstore, according to Assistant Planning Director Charlie Yokley.
There are three small lots in a row fronting on Rogers between South Main and Heritage Center Drive, and the site work, grading and leveling, is being done on all three lots. The Rite-Aid, however, will occupy only the lot nearest South Main. On that 1.73 acres the developer plans to build a 11,115-square-foot store with 49 parking spaces and two driveways, both right-in, right-out, on South Main and Rogers.
On Jan. 28 Primax Properties of Charlotte purchased the Rite-Aid site from Heritage Outparcels LLC for $1.6 million. On that same day, Lat Purser & Associates from Charlotte purchased the other two parcels, 1.3 acres an 1.36 acres, for $1.98 million each.
The three parcels were owned since 2009 by an Andy Ammons company, Franklin Village LLC, but in September 2015 Lat W. Purser III of Charlotte bought them for, it appears, the same amounts as the Jan. 28 transactions.
Yokley also said: “The other two parcels were included on the construction plans for the Rite Aid, but no building footprints, parking, etc., were shown. There will be no additional accesses to Rogers Road or South Main Street to those parcels. There is an access easement from South Main Street to Heritage Center Drive for all three parcels, and an additional access easement out to Rogers Road.”
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A benefit, a small one it is true, of the Republican presidential campaign is that a large segment of the American people now can pronounce and spell “misogyny” and “xenophobia” and even know first-hand the definition of each.
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Been worried that we will not have more subdivisions in Wake Forest? Not to fear. The Wake Forest Planning Department’s Technical Review Committee reviewed two new subdivisions when it met on Feb. 18.
The first is for 54 single-family lots on 25.91 acres in the southeast corner where Harris Road meets West Oak Avenue. Randy Spivey of Wendell purchased the property in 2011 from Dwight and Mary Wilson. CAA Engineers is requesting a rezoning to conditional use general residential 10.
The second, requested by The Nau Company, is to rezone 31.5 acres along Star Road to conditional use general residential 5 for 61 single-family lots. The land is owned by La Scala Associates which also has plans for a multi-family subdivision farther north on Star Road, Villagio at La Scala, which was approved for 248 units in June 2012.
The larger development proposed by developer/builder Daryl Cady, LaScala Uptown, was approved in the spring of 2007 with Italian architecture, an “open space lifestyle center” with upscale boutiques, restaurants, entertainment, an office park and an amphitheater. That fall, Cady received approval for an office building, an 89-room hotel taller than 60 feet and an assembly or ballroom building on seven acres as the first phase of the overall La Scala project. He built the street into the property but no further construction has taken place.
Some of the other approved or projected projects on Star Road in 2007 were a redevelopment of the Starlite Motel and pawnshop property, an approved master plan that would allow Allen Massey and Jeff Looper to build a five-lot commercial subdivision just to the south of Living Word Family Church, and a commercial subdivision planned at the end of the road. And Wakefield United Methodist Church owns a landlocked lot behind the La Scala first phase site and plans to build in the future.
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Wake Forest Town Hall and other town offices will be closed Friday, March 25, for Good Friday. Police, fire, garbage collection and recycling collection schedules will not be affected. The Wake Forest bus service, both the intown-Wakefield loop and the Wake Forest-Raleigh express, will not run on Friday but will resume normal schedules on Monday, March 28.
