Planners turn down Radford Glen

Tuesday night the Wake Forest Planning Board unanimously turned down the request by owner George Mackie Jr. and family members as well as potential developer Russell Gay to approve a plan for 167 single-family homes and 10 townhouses on 47 acres on the south side of Wait Avenue next to the Bowling Green subdivision.

Planners questioned the layout and the connections to Bowling Green, particularly the connection to Frog Hollow Way, a narrow street which would be the only way to reach a signalized intersection because a traffic signal is planned where Bowling Green and Bishops Grant meet Wait. There will be no traffic signal at the entrance to Radford Glen from Wait because it is so close to the already-approved signal.

The second layout and connection problem raised by Joe Kimray, Grif Bond and Karin Kuropas was the townhouse section which was cut off from the rest of the development by a stream. A bridge was not planned. Instead, the area would be served by a street that would connect to a stub from Main Divide Drive in Bowling Green. That would mean residents would have to drive through another subdivision to reach the amenities in the main section. It would be from a cul-de-sac street, 290 feet long, and longer still, 400 or so feet, before it could reach Main Divide Street. There were also concerns about whether fire and garbage trucks would be able to turn around safely.

There is a long and tortuous tale about this land. Most recently it was on the planning board agenda for July 2018. The following is from earlier editions of The Wake Forest Gazette.

On June 27 Russell Gay, who was negotiating with former Wake Forest mayor George Mackie Jr. to purchase 47 acres on Wait Avenue (NC 98) for the Radford Glen subdivision, submitted a request to withdraw the subdivision’s rezoning and masterplan application “since no resolution between the developer and property owner on the contractual agreement had been reached.”

The Radford Glen rezoning and master plan was one of only three items on the Wake Forest Planning Board’s agenda Tuesday night. The request to withdraw was approved unanimously.

The Radford Glen request was, like its antecedents, a tale of changes. This 2018 version began with the town’s technical review board looking at a plan on Dec. 21, 2017 for 176 single-family lots on 100 acres. By the time the plan was officially withdrawn it had become 177 lots on 46.97 acres.

Mackie has been trying to develop a residential subdivision on the land he and other family members own lying between Wait Avenue (N.C. 98) since 2014. In August of that year the J.R. McAdam engineering firm was the applicant, the name was Quail Crossing and the plan called for 307 housing units – a mix of single-family and townhouses on 116 acres which included the only trailer park in town, Wellington Trailer Park. The land extended to Jones Dairy Road where there would be another entrance. (If the subdivision name sounds familiar it is because the defunct plan for a shopping center nearby at the N.C. 98 bypass and Jones Dairy Road was named Quail Crossings.)

After this announcement there was no official action. The plan disappeared until March and May 2015 when it was twice on the planning board agenda but named Westford Place with 100 acres. The trailer park was now renamed Deerfield Crossing Mobile Home Park and would be untouched. Both times it was removed from the agenda before the meeting.

Westford Place resurfaced in 2016 with 248 single-family lots on 100 acres. Bob Zumwalt with the John R. McAdams Company was the engineer but the purchaser’s name was not known. The item was on the Wake Forest Planning Board’s agenda for March and delayed until April. In an email on April 7, Zumwalt wrote to a town planner, “Unfortunately we have run into some contract issues with the purchaser of the land that have cause further delays of the project. Sine we are unclear as to how long it will take to resolve these issues, we would like to officially request that both the rezoning/master plan and the annexation be withdrawn at this time.”

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In other actions, the planning board approved these requests:

*A request to annex and rezone 3.5 acres on Jeanne Street where the owners plan to build a single-family house and want town utilities.

*A request to rezone 128.37  acres on the east side of Capital Boulevard to light industrial for some unidentified commercial use. The land has been part of the Powell House land, a National Register landmark built in about 1820, and the house and a substantial land area will remain untouched with a 50-foot wooded buffer and a 6-foot wooden fence built along the boundary.

Kimray asked that the uses of outside storage and a telecommunications tower be removed because the area is the entrance to Wake Forest, The tower will be removed as will the right to have a rental storage building.

*A request to annex 2.27 acres now in Franklin County along Pine View Street in the Everly subdivision. Fifteen single-family homes are planned there along with a further extension of the subdivision which has already been annexed to Wake Forest.

Mayor Vivian Jones said she had received many complaints about construction traffic on Haltwhistle Street instead of the agreement that traffic would use Steven Taylor Road.

*A request for a land swap with the town and a rezoning of 23.89 acres in the Kitchin Farms subdivision along Ligon Mill Road where the developer plans to build single-family homes on smaller lots in line with current housing demand.

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