Tuesday night the Wake Forest commissioners agreed to sell a 0.76-acre lot on Caddell Street to DRCW Investments. DRCW will subdivide the land into four lots, build homes and sell the houses for between $180,000 and $230,000 to owners earning between 80 percent to 120 percent of the Area Median Income for Wake County.
Commissioner Bridget Wall-Lennon questioned whether this public-private partnership, though not mentioned as such, should include a provision that minority businesses should be given favored treatment.
After a motion by Commissioner Brian Pate to proceed with the sale and a second by Commissioner Greg Harrington, Wall-Lennon said she wants to support the project of affordable housing. “I will take to heart what the mayor has said that the contractor will work with minority contractors.” As for Pate’s comment that “I don’t think we should insert something at the last minute,” Wall-Lennon said in her work, “We negotiate stuff at the last minute all the time.”
In a presentation early in the agenda, architect Matt Hale and Victor McBryde, the general manager for Focus Design Builders, said the exterior of the Northern Wake Senior Center is 95 percent complete. On the inside, Hale said, contractors are working from north to south. The air conditioning is on, the flooring is going in, most lights are hung.
McBryde said overall the building is 93 percent complete and he expects work to be finished by Aug. 1. Hale said it will take a month after the completion date before the Resources for Seniors staff can move in along with all the senior center members. After that, they can consider a ribbon cutting. “It’s been a good project,” McBryde said, “a little challenging.”
Part of that challenge was the site, which was very steep, Hale said, with bad soil and rocks. Over a million of the current cost with change orders, $4.2 million, was spent on creating a new parking lot with access to South Brooks Street. (That link from Elm Avenue to East Holding Avenue took 27 years.)
Assistant Public Works Director Allison Snyder told the commissioners – Commissioner Anne Reeve was absent with an illness – the leaf collection has had consistent trouble, everything from mechanical issues to equipment breakdown to the time traveling to the deport facility. Rather than the once-a-week service, the public utilities department wants to change to every-other-week service, which she said could be more dependable. Information about that change will be available soon.
The board agreed to waive the future inspection fees for the American Legion Post to expand the main meeting room to accommodate all the different nonprofit groups from scout troops to ham radio operators who use it. The amount waived was $849.70. Several officers and members of the post went to the podium in support of the waiver, including Commander Mark Dwyer, Ed Lind and George Aux, cochairmen of the building committee.
At the close of the meeting, Pate made a statement about his concern that there are too many storage building businesses in town, saying he wants to hide them or make the exterior more in keeping with an office building. Planning Director Chip Russell went to the podium and said he would see, in the limited time he has left before retirement, whether the town can either require new design standards or restrict where they can be built.
After the agenda and commissioner reports, the mayor, commissioners and town officials went into closed session to consider the purchase of land for the Stadium Drive project right-of-way.
