Downsizing requested for Franklin project

Bolus heirs requesting rezoning for subdivision on Wait

A year ago the Wake Forest Town Board by a four to one vote approved Marc Iafrate’s request to build 108 apartments on South Franklin Street just north of the N.C. 98 bypass (the Dr. Calvin Jones Highway).

Next Tuesday, Iafrate will ask the town planning board and commissioners to allow him to change his plans so that he can build 61 townhouses, the Franklin Street Townhomes, in place of the apartments, reducing the estimated number of residents by about 130.

The Wake Forest Planning Board will take up his request and will also hear a rezoning and master plan request by Michael G. and Thomas K. Bolus for a 49-lot subdivision to be called Lakestone on Wait Avenue.

The Iafrate request will be an evidentiary quasi-judicial hearing with sworn testimony; the hearing for the rezoning for a conditional use district and approval of the master plan will be legislative with comments and testimony accepted from all interested parties. The planning board meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the second-floor meeting room at town hall. The town board members will also be present for the public hearings.

In 2014, Commissioner Margaret Stinnett voted against the apartment plan, saying her concerns were that there was only one entrance/exit, the clubhouse and pool were next to the sidewalk at the entrance and she had concerns about the setbacks and general plan.

Other commissioners had concerns. Commissioner Anne Reeve had a problem with the amenities center’s location but concluded it might be better there than at the back of the property near an adjoining subdivision. Commissioner Zachary Donahue said he would prefer to see two entrances, but Reeve said the second entrance might “create more of a nightmare for Franklin Street” than the one entrance/exit opposite Yellow Poplar Avenue. She said that if the town planners and particularly the fire marshal had approved the plan then she had to assume it was safe.

In 2014 neighbors protested the plan, saying it would add congestion to an already busy street, Franklin, and stressing the unsafe nature of the Franklin/bypass intersection where a traffic signal is desperately needed.

The new plan, along with reducing the number of people who will live in the project, addresses one of those concerns. Now there are two entrances, one opposite Yellow Poplar Avenue and one nearer the bypass. (It should be noted that RG Tec Securities is adding six townhouses at 314-320 Sugar Maple Avenue on the other side of Franklin Street behind the office building that houses Village Pharmacy, Allied Rehab and a dentist’s office in the mixed townhouse and single-family house neighborhood.)

The clubhouse and pool are still at the entrance. The two streets leading into the complex will be public while private alleys will serve the townhouses for access to parking and garages. There will be recreation areas between the back two banks of townhouses.

Lakestone subdivision on Wait Avenue

The Bolus family members are planning to use land once owned by their grandmother, Mary Bolus, who owned Bolus Department Store on South White Street with her husband and who donated the land under the Wake Forest Reservoir, which is just to the west of the proposed subdivision site on the north side of Wait Avenue.

The developer will apparently be realtor Russell Gay, who was identified at the neighborhood meeting on Nov. 10, 2014, as the “contract-purchaser.” Other attending were Senior Planner Charlie Yokley, the property owners, engineer Marty Bizzell with Bass, Nixon & Kennedy engineering firm, and attorney Beth Trahos.

The land rises to the east but drains to the south because of an unnamed stream that cuts through it. Its eastern neighbor is Mackie Park, an industrial park owned by former Wake Forest mayor George Mackie and his wife, Martha. Mackie also owns Wellington Trailer Park directly across Wait on the south side. The Wake Forest Planning Department is reviewing a plan submitted by Mackie for a residential subdivision, 307 housing units in an unspecified mix of single-family homes and townhouse units, on the 116 acres of the trailer park that stretch down to Jones Dairy Road.

The Bolus plan for Lakestone is for one entrance on Wait with a stubbed-out street at the back of the property on the eastern edge. There will be sidewalks on both sides of the streets, which end in cul-de-sacs or the stub-out. Most of the 49 lots on the 29 acres back up to the Neuse River stream buffer on both sides of the small creek.