INC NEWS - Growth, attitudes both go south (Durham News)

[John Schelp]

Growth, attitudes both go south 
By Jim Wise, Durham News, 31 March 2007

In the past two months, three proposed subdivisions,
and a fourth already under construction, have stirred
south-Durham citizens to action such as hasn't been
seen in years.

As of mid-week, 354 people had signed a petition to
Durham's City Council and Board of County
Commissioners to raise a red flag over the proposed
Jordan at Southpoint on the county's southern fringe.

In February, residents' opposition encouraged the
county board to turn thumbs down on the Scott Mill
project on Scott King Road.

On Monday, though, the commissioners did approve a
preliminary plan for the "Fayetteville Road
Assemblage"; and more than 30 acres on Herndon Road
have been mass-graded for another subdivision, the
56-home Southampton.

"It's just a big bald patch," said Melissa Rooney, who
lives in the Fairfield subdivision just across Herndon
Road.

Scott Mill, the rejected project, was to be a 71-home
project on 44 acres on Scott King Road -- land that is
part of a "designated natural heritage area."

The "Fayetteville Road Assemblage" is a
for-the-time-being name of a 276-home subdivision on
142 acres along Fayetteville Road just south of the
American Tobacco Trail.

Jordan at Southpoint is a project of up to 218
single-family residences on 126 acres between Scott
King Road and the Chatham County line, bordered on the
west by N.C. 751. It's due for review by the Durham
Planning Commission in April.

"We're losing the face of southern Durham," said Robyn
Miller, another Fairfield resident.

The prospects of woodland loss, of flooding, erosion
and debased water quality -- not to mention
frustration with Durham's rules of engagement over
land use and development -- have pushed many
south-Durham property owners into action: signing
petitions, organizing groups such as the Fairfield
Neighborhood Community Awareness Committee, forming
electronic lines of communication and showing up at
public meetings to keep their part of the county from
losing the character they like.

"It is a fairly rural, forested area," Rooney said.
"It's not like Cary, it's not developed up. ... It is
close to the [Southpoint] mall and close to I-40 and
we like that, but ... the cows graze just a couple of
miles from the mall."

Active neighborhoods have been part of Durham's
political landscape since the early 1970s, but those
most often heard from are in older sections closer to
the historic heart of town.

In fast-developing southern Durham, nothing like the
present surge has been seen since Citizens Against
Urban Sprawl Everywhere packed City Council chambers
in opposition to the Southpoint shopping center eight
years ago.

"We have just gotten assaulted," resident Liz Pullman
said before the Scott Mill vote. "There are no more
whippoorwill sounds like we used to have, they're
drowned out by construction."

Residents' successful opposition to Scott Mill, Rooney
said, "was a really big turning point ... for getting
people involved."

The issues that move them, though, may reflect the
circumstances of south-Durham development's winding
down, said City/County Planning Director Frank Duke.

"Development in that area has dropped off," Duke said
this week. "There's not that much more left.

"If you look throughout Durham," he said, "the land
remaining is more difficult to develop because of
environmental constraints. ... I think the concern is
that some of those environmental features could be
lost."

County Commissioner Becky Heron voted for the
Fayetteville Road Assemblage Monday night, but she
said it was with reluctance. The project was submitted
before the current Unified Development Ordinance went
into effect.

Since it met requirements of the earlier rules,
commissioners had no choice but to approve, even
though the plan includes partially filling a stream
floodplain.

"We have heard so much from the neighborhoods that
have been impacted so much by all this development,"
Heron said. "So many are suffering now. ... With the
effects of rain and flood, it certainly has an impact
if they want to sell."

Rooney also said that drainage is a problem. "Most of
my neighbors' yards are under water a third of the
year."

Jordan at Southpoint comes under the new ordinance,
Duke said, and its hearing before the Planning
Commission was continued for a month to let the
developer, Neighborhood Development Partners LLC of
Raleigh, confer with the neighbors.

That's one achievement for those already living in
southern Durham.

"We really do care," Rooney said. "It's going to be
developed, there's no doubt about that, but citizens
need to have more say in how."