GOVERNMENT
By Adam Powell
Correspondent
CHAPEL HILL–At the September 25 meeting of the Chapel Hill Town Council, the board unanimously approved an amended initial preliminary plat for an expansion of a previously approved subdivision along Grand Alexander Court. The owners request a tripling of the originally approved lots to accommodate more housing units.
In their initial preliminary plat request in 2006, John and Leslie Mackowiak received approval from the Town of Chapel Hill for three lots (120, 121, and 130 Grand Alexander Court) as part of the Aquabella major subdivision. The 4.7-acre site currently has one existing home on it. Approximately three acres are requested to be developed under the modified plat amendment.
Three years following the initial plat approval, in 2009, the Mackowiaks received a Zoning Compliance Permit, which allowed them to begin road and utility construction at the site. But nothing additional has been constructed within the subdivision in the ensuing decade and a half.
The Mackowiaks received final plat approval in 2016, but now the owners are looking to create six new lots from those existing properties, for a total of nine lots on which new properties could be constructed.
By definition, approving five or more lots for residential construction constitutes a major subdivision in Chapel Hill.
It’s a somewhat unique request (something both the owner and Chapel Hill’s mayor acknowledged before the council dove into the subject in more detail) but with Chapel Hill eager to find ways to create infill housing to solve its overall lack of housing supply, town leaders are considering the proposed additional lots.
“This is the first time in a long time that a major subdivision application has come before the council; in fact, my nine years on the council, I have not seen one. So I guess thanks for the experience, folks,” said mayor Jessica Anderson. “What we are being asked to do is to authorize a preliminary plat that is the first step in a multi-step process.”
“This is kind of historic for the mayor, but it may be historic in other ways also, because this may also be the last subdivision of this size that’s approved by Town Council, as I’ve been keeping up with (Chapel Hill Principal Planner) Tas (Lagoo) and the new LUMO (Chapel Hill is drafting),” added John Mackowiak.
According to town records, Aquabella currently has four lots, with the Mackowiaks owning three and a separate owner holding the other lot. Expanding the Mackowiaks’ three lots to nine would increase the total number of lots within Aquabella from four to ten.
An ephemeral stream running through three of the proposed lots in a section that runs parallel along Pinehurst Drive is a concern that must be addressed. While stormwater control measures (SCMs) were constructed for the four original Aquabella lots following the 2006 initial plat approval, town staff has indicated to the owners that the preexisting SCMs will not be adequate to handle such a drastic increase in prospective housing units. Additional SCM initiatives will be necessary before the project will commence.
“All major subdivisions have to meet stormwater management requirements,” said town planner Charnika Harrell. “A major subdivision is a subdivision that creates five or more lots for the preliminary plat. Each lot has to meet dimensional layout and access requirements. Subdivisions are administrative decisions, meaning that if the new lots meet subdivision requirements, the subdivision must be approved.”
Harrell added that as part of the process, the town’s Planning Commission provides a recommendation, but the council ultimately acts on the preliminary plat. Town Manager Chris Blue approves the final plat, which then gets recorded with the Register of Deeds. Staff approvals are needed for future development on the lots.
Under the current R-1 zoning of the properties, a wide range of uses are available, including single-family units, a single-family unit with an accessory apartment, a single-family unit with a detached cottage, or two-family units that could be attached or detached.
With one to two units allowed per lot, this subdivision could have nine to 18 housing units constructed within it in the coming years.
The owner is not proposing to provide affordable housing among the prospective units, which means that this process will not fall under the town’s new expedited program for affordable housing units. In lieu of providing affordable housing within this phase of Aquabella, the Mackowiaks are proposing to pay Chapel Hill a subsidy “equivalent to 15% of the units allowed on the six new lots being created,” according to town records.
Harrell indicated to town leaders that planning staff verified that the proposed lots meet the dimensional layout and access requirements and are in compliance with other requirements of the town’s land use management ordinance (LUMO). Other components of the LUMO will be verified during subsequent processes, such as the final plat and zoning compliance permits.
Aquabella sits within a web of residential development: The Oaks lots (totaling approximately 2/3 to one acre in size) to the immediate north; Meadowmont lots (totaling approximately a quarter of an acre) to the immediate west and south; and other lots within Aquabella ( approximately a third of an acre) to the immediate east.
“Most of the (stormwater) runoff from this comes to us from Meadowmont, and then it goes to Spider’s Ridge and to The Oaks, but the maps show that it all flows to the Chapel Hill Country Club (golf course) irrigation ponds. It doesn’t go directly into a little creek, which during flooding, is not that little. But it’s a reusable water source, the runoff. So it’s not all negative,” Mackowiak explained.
“To solve the stormwater problems that affect these houses, we can’t do it alone on these three acres,” he added. “We have to do our share, of course, according to the law, but all the water comes down and influences those lots that were built in the floodplain.”
Despite Mackowiak’s pledge to mitigate some of the stormwater issues within the Aquabella community, numerous local residents spoke out regarding that specific component.
Reed Lerner, a resident at 121 Mulligan Drive adjacent to the lots in question, mentioned that stormwater from Aquabella currently flows down onto his property.
“If you’re not in compliance with the rules, I don’t understand or agree that any additional approvals should be allowed. Otherwise, what is the point of the rules?” stated Mackowiak. “As of today, the Aquabella bioretention pond simply aggregates and dumps water onto my property. No easement allows Aquabella to do this. You’re right, John, that the water does flow from the bioretention pond to the golf course. But it flows from my property, and you have no easement to do that. I’m asking the town of Chapel Hill to have the developer remove or relocate the drainage pipe and the PVC pipe which concentrates the water and dumps the water under my property. I ask the town council to require remediation immediately, and require more significant stormwater evaluation of the Grand Alexander proposal in total, not by individual lot.”
“The new culvert is inadequate for dealing with this volume of water, and it actually irresponsibly dumps the water downstream on the neighbors and fails to deal with the stormwater north of Grand Alexander,” added David Broadwell, a resident of nearby Pinehurst Drive. “The applicant states (that) the applicant intends to use the existing stormwater control management for the proposed additional lots. He admits a ridge divides the property into two drainage zones. All the western area drains into the current resource conservation district that was quite appropriately put into the first plat.”
“If the town is committed to infill projects like this one, the town needs to acknowledge that projects like this are not traditional subdivisions where a developer controls a large area,” Broadwell continued. “There is no buffer zone. Whatever is built affects the neighbors, and that should be part of the approval process. Waiting until individual lot zoning compliance approval to deal with stormwater is too late, and it’s irrational. I pity the new lot owner, he or she (who) wants to build and asks, Where’s my drainage?”
“I’m just feeling a lot of distrust, honestly, in this process. And fear. We are really directly affected by this,” added Dr. Claire West of 1019 Pinehurst Drive. “My neighbor John Mackowiak has told us that the reason that his lot is flooding now is because we are not maintaining drainage onto our property. And I’ve made it a game with my son to go during every storm and check to make sure that it (the drainage) is open and it’s always flowing readily. But there’s just an enormous amount of water sitting there that is still waiting to come onto our property. And so I’m just really worried that this is going to affect us if it’s approved.”
Town legal staff indicated that if the Aquabella lot expansion were to go forward, town staff would analyze compliance with all provisions of the LUMO, including tree canopy and stormwater compliance. The purpose of the initial amended plat review was to consider the preliminary amended plat, not to approve the entire project.
“One thing that I’m really aware of is that so many of the projects that have come before us recently, there is a serious stormwater issue with them,” said Sharp. “I agree with many of the comments that people have made, and if I lived in the neighborhood, I would share your concerns. I think it’s incumbent on us moving forward to make sure that our stormwater ordinances in the new LUMO reflect the complicated geography and topography of our town, and what is becoming more and more complicated year by year.”
“I look forward to the applicant working towards regaining trust, because what I heard tonight is that trust has been broken,” added fellow council member Camille Berry.
The mayor laid out a prospective timeline for the major subdivision work being requested by the Mackowiaks within Aquabella, indicating that stormwater remediation efforts will be necessary at the site, along with a more specific plan about precisely what the owner plans to construct there.
“Before anything can be built, more detailed plans will be submitted to the town and reviewed by our staff to ensure they meet our town ordinances, including for stormwater,” explained mayor Anderson. “With all that said, I do want to acknowledge that there have been problems with the existing stormwater system. It is my understanding that staff is working with the property owners to make sure that those are addressed.”
Adam Powell is a reporter on local news and sports and an education communications professional. A 2001 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Powell has served as managing editor of multiple local publications, including the Mebane Enterprise, News of Orange County and TarHeelIllustrated.com. The public information officer for Rockingham County Schools in Eden, N.C., Powell is the author of four books and lives in Mebane with his wife and two children. This reporter can be reached at: Info@TheLocal Reporter.press
In the photo showing a tree across a road near Boone, the road is incorrectly identified as I-95 which is nowhere near Boone!