From: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 5:22 PM
To: Roger Stancil; Kevin Foy; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
JB Culpepper; Gene Poveromo; Dwight Bassett
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Citizen Letter in response to Proposed LUMO changes presented
2-18-2008
[It is not clear if this emailed letter was received, so I repeat it here. Lynne Kane]
February 17, 2008 re: Proposed LUMO changes, 2-18-2008 Town Council Agenda
To the Mayor and Town Council, Chapel Hill Planning Director and Development Coordinator, and Economic Development Officer:
I write in response to Tim Kuhn’s Letter to the Chapel Hill Planning Board dated 2-5-2008 as included in the Town Council Agenda for 2-18-2008.
Tim Kuhn lives in The Meadows subdivision off Legion Road as I do. He is often away from his home for several days or even two weeks at a time in his work for GlaxoSmithKline. For a variety of reasons, I am rarely away from my home except for a day. Therefore it has been puzzling why Tim Kuhn has been so severely opposed to a pending residential development slightly abutting his and two or three other of the 56 homes in The Meadows. Turnberry residents, whose entire north boundary abutts the pending residential development, are heartily in favor of The Sanctuary at Cobblestone, as you have heard in a Town Council hearing.
Tim’s assertion that “Over the past months, the residents of the The Meadows have expressed concerns to the developer, Design Commission, and Town Council about the environmental, safety, density, and privacy issues of the proposed Sanctuary at Cobblestone Creek” is outrageously misleading. Tim Kuhn, Betty Longiottti, and Scott Baker have been the abuttors who oppose any development of David Lindquist’s property (though it has two dilapidated structures and discarded cans and bottles on it already). Scott Baker and his wife, who is expecting again, have sold their home in the interim, even with the residential plan filed. So the Bakers are no longer abuttors. Jim Huffman and his wife, who are also abuttors, have no objection to David Lindquist’s plans. Two other Meadows residents, Bruce Turner and Virginia Gray, have expressed objections to Lindquist’s plan that do not really carry much water, since The Meadows plants privacy shrubs much smaller than Lindquist proposes, and the roads have been revised for emergency vehicle access, etc.
This kind of assertion that 5 or fewer residents’ objections amount to an entire subdivision’s objection is the kind of exaggeration that caused me to become involved in Town Council hearings. One man from Summerfield Crossing was alleging that his objection to Food Lion moving from Eastgate Plaza into Ram’s Plaza represented everyone in his large subdivision, and the Council around year 2000 was simply accepting this outrageously illogical assertion (Ram’s Plaza is farther from his subdivision than Eastgate) because it was the popularly-held objection to any new development. I was the individual who had to locate the President of the HOA to identify them as favoring a new Food Lion, and I then took a business-owners’ petition around Ram’s Plaza businesses to submit to Council as evidence of the problems in a half-empty, rundown Ram’s Plaza.
I hope that Town Council members will be practical in reviewing Staff’s recommendations from JB Culpepper and Gene Poveromo, which retain much control over development:
“We believe the third option is the best and simplest way to allow 7 or more units, while simultaneously retaining legislative control.
With this option, a developer would be required to apply for both a rezoning to a conditional use zoning district and a Special Use Permit. If the property is successfully rezoned, approval of a Special Use Permit for a multi-family development could be granted by the Council in accordance with the floor area restrictions, density caps, landscape buffers, and other regulatory requirements of the underlying zoning district, if the Council is able to make the four findings necessary to approve a Special Use Permit:”
Most importantly, I hope the Town Council in year 2008 now recognizes the pressing need for more workforce housing in Chapel Hill and the goal of looking at the overall good and welfare of the Town.
Thank you for your time in reading this, and please make it a part of the public record along with Tim Kuhn’s letter.
Lynne Kane
11 Lark Circle
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
Tel. 919-960-0983
Email: [email protected]