TO: Mayor and Town Council
FROM: W. Calvin Horton, Town Manager
SUBJECT: Revision to Application for a Modification of the Special Use Permit for a Town Park at Meadowmont
DATE: November 19, 2001
This report is written from the perspective of the Town as Owner and describes changes proposed to the application originally submitted to the Town staff and presented to Town advisory boards.
On June 11, 2001, the Town Council authorized the Town Manager to participate with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board in an application for a Modification of the Special Use Permit for the park and school at Meadowmont. That authorization included the concept plan for the school site, and by reflection, the park site.
On February 26, 2001, the Council approved expedited review for the Meadowmont Elementary School application for a Special Use Permit Modification.
The Meadowmont development is located in the Town’s Watershed Protection District. Accordingly, the Meadowmont Master Land Use Plan includes a total amount of impervious surface that can be constructed in the overall development, and the developer has allocated portions of that total to each parcel using deed restrictions. The total allocated to each parcel is the maximum amount of impervious surface allowed by State regulations, and cannot be increased.
As the school site and building plans have been refined, it has become clear that the amount of impervious surface needed on the school site is greater than what is permitted for the site. The addition of the community gym instead of a multi-purpose room on the site is one of the reasons that the amount of impervious surface proposed for the school site is insufficient.
We believe that it is important to remove as much impervious surface and land disturbance as reasonably possible from the Resource Conservation District and the flowage easement of the Army Corps of Engineers; and, we have been working with the School Board to do that. In addition, there are two elements that complicate the limitations of impervious surface on the school and park developments: 1) the allocation of impervious surface to each of the developments governed by the Meadowmont Master Land Use Plan and, 2) an error made in the drawing of the deeds for the park and school sites.
1) The allocation by deed covenants of impervious surface for the park site is 71,340 square feet, and for the school site is 233,842 square feet, for a total of 305,182. The School Board has requested that the Town agree to transfer some of the impervious surface from the park site to the school site. The Town Attorney advises that the original grantor, who had written the deed restrictions, would need to agree to such a transfer.
2) The developer of Meadowmont has recently discovered that the covenants in the deeds that transferred to the Town the land for the school and park site contain two errors. (Please see the attached letter from William H. Derks, which explains this in more detail.) The key point is that the deeds have transferred a total of 46,000 square feet of impervious surface for the school and park sites more than the developer had meant to. The developer requests that the filing of correction deeds be authorized. While it is clear that the deed covenants as currently provided are legal and binding, it is also the case that the developer’s consent is needed for the Town to be able to transfer from the park site to the school site both the permitted floor area and the impervious surface needed by the school.
Given this situation, we would recommend consideration of the following changes:
o Delete the outdoor basketball court in the park and include the outdoor basketball court behind the school in the Joint Use Agreement already authorized by the Town Council between the Town and the School Board.
o Delete the parking area and associated access road to the Park, and use the existing parking on the school site.
o Delete the compost/yard waste site and the associated accessory building that were approved in 1997 when the Town’s yard waste collection program provided irregular pick-up every two to four weeks. Yard waste is now collected on a weekly schedule, in most cases.
o Change the 10’ wide paved greenway to a natural surface trail from the pedestrian bridge at the southwest corner of the school building as it moves north and then east along the border between the park and the school. We believe that the greenway is important up to the bridge so that children and others using the athletic fields can bicycle there. However, the remainder of the greenway was originally proposed when it led to a softball field, a soccer field, a basketball court, a compost/yard waste site, a natural surface trail and paved parking. With the changes made to accommodate the fields on the higher ground and the other changes mentioned above, this part of the trail leads to a natural surface nature trail. We believe that this change to a natural trail would protect the wooded Resource Conservation District along the stream that separates the fields from the school building and would significantly reduce the land disturbance in the flowage easement.
We believe that these changes would conform the project to the intent of the developer and make possible the transfer of floor area from the park site to the school site.
Another change that should have been included on the original drawing, unrelated to impervious surface, is the addition of the natural surface pedestrian path to Lancaster Drive. This path is consistent with the Council’s stipulation #12 of the 1997 Special Use Permit that requires “That the nature trail built by the developer be continued to connect to Lancaster Drive.” We note that the neighbors of the Oaks Villas object to this connection.
We believe that these proposed changes would improve the situation for the community, by allowing the elementary school to include a community gym and room for future expansion, by reducing impervious surface and land disturbance in the Resource Conservation District and Army Corps flowage easement, and would be consistent with the Town Council’s direction.
1. November 14, 2001 Letter from William H. Derks (p. 4).
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