[Durham INC] Planning Commission verdict a blow to Berini Drive development plans | News | heraldsun.com

[don lebkes]

Durham neighborhoods

This the same national builder, same Durham lawyer,  and the same problems with the neighborhoods that W. Cornwallis is having.  While the circumstance vary the topics of objections to the development are the same.
Come to the City Council meeting this Monday the 20th at 7PM.  This public hearing should settle the W. Cornwallis zoning case.  Bring your family and friends lets keep our neighborhoods great places to live.  We need to stand together, developers can and must do better.  Have developers abandon the cookie cutter approach to development and use imagination and innovation instead.

Don Lebkes
Colony Park
http://www.heraldsun.com/content/tncms/live/

Planning Commission verdict a blow to Berini Drive development plans

DURHAM — Clad in red clothing and donning anti-rezoning stickers residents around a proposed 300-unit, single-family and townhome development on Berini Drive were successful in their first step in stopping it on Tuesday night.

More than 100 residents packed the City-County Planning Commission meeting to plead with the board to unfavorably move it forward to the City Council in an effort to stop it from coming to fruition.

The proposal for 83.31 acres of land on 4115 Berini Drive would require the city to rezone four parcels of land at 4115 Berini Drive.

The area is heavily wooded, except one parcel that is home to wireless communication facilities. The developer set to build the houses and townhomes is Pulte Homes, also the developer also behind the embattled Cornwallis Road development that was recently continued by the City Council.

Patrick Byker, of Morningstar Law Group, was representing Pulte Homes. He said the new zoning allows the “appropriate density for acreage that is adjacent to a freeway as designated on our future land use map for up to four units per acre.”

“Durham has to be a good steward of its limited land resources,” Byker said. “While (the new zoning) does correlate with homes on relatively small lots, this zoning map change is consistent with current market trends and sound land principles.”

However nearby residents aren’t sold on the new development. More than a dozen spoke before the commission to voice their concerns ranging from increased traffic on neighborhood streets, nonconforming with previous developments, impacts to the Ellerbe Creek watershed, increased impervious surfaces, clear-cutting trees and increased density.

Resident Frances Mock in a presentation to the commission showed the stark contrast between the homes around the proposed development and homes built recently in Apex by Pulte.

The homes along Berini Drive currently are set back from the road, some with large front porches with sprawling lawns and plenty of trees.

The development in Apex — Magnolia Walk — has houses that with small front porches that are close to the roadway with smaller front porch areas and less landscaping.

Mock said she was told by a representative from Pulte that the development on Berini Drive would be “exactly the same development.”

Mock said there was no architectural diversity in the development and the lots are “significantly smaller.”

“To be clear, I’m not here to oppose any development on this Berini assemblage, I’m here to oppose the request to rezone it and double the density of that property,” Mock said.

Mock provided the commissioners with a pack of information on the community’s objections to the development along with 225 signatures against it — even though there is no longer an option for a protest petition.

“We are asking you tonight to comply with the (Unified Development Ordinance) and to protect our neighborhood,” Mock said.

Bryan Scherich, another nearby resident and a commercial real estate developer, said Pulte’s approach to the new development has raised some red flags for him.

“I hope as the Planning Commission you will hold developers accountable, myself included, to design projects in the best interest of our community, not just their bottom line,” he said

Raymond Pierce, former dean of the N.C. Central University School of Law, said the neighborhoods off of Berini Drive were selling points to academics coming into the area. He said communities like the neighborhood in that area are a rare asset in North Carolina.

“I just find it troubling that it would be considered to actually considered to actually eliminate a rare asset that you have,” he said. “This is a neighborhood used not only to attract people to Durham, but also to incentivize people who have been offered positions.”

Commissioners after hearing from the residents were unanimous in their decision to vote unfavorably on the development.

Commissioner Linda Huff did not sugar coat her feelings about the development.

“It’s a beautiful piece of property,” she said. “They could take advantage of the landscape … I am appalled at this development, I absolutely am. … It’s a virus that’s going to come in, kill the piece of property and just go away and you guys are going to be left with the consequences.”

The Planning Commission voted to move it forward unfavorably to the City Council which will vote on it at a future meeting.

Follow Lauren Horsch on Twitter at @LaurenHorsch. She blogs about local government and Durham life at bit.ly/HallMonitor.


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