PH ORD-2002-034 Orange County Zoning Ordinance Text Amendments Amend Article 6.29.3

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Commissioner Gordon did not understand why the whole area was being considered for this. Craig Benedict said that they want some of the mixed use development opportunities, and there are none in this EDD. Commissioner Gordon said that the part that is near I-40/I-85 could remain primary and then the part that is residential could be secondary. There are not very many places in the County where you are allowed to have these uses. She would like to think about it before eliminating the possibility. Craig Benedict said that they could look at a step-down approach and come up with some more primary uses that would be compatible with the secondary uses. Commissioner Gordon does not want to cut this area in half and give up on it. She would like to keep the I-40/I-85 corridor a primary use. Chair Jacobs referred to the permanent use chart and said that it seems that the primary precludes mixed use. He said that no one could live and then walk to their place of employment. He said that this is counter to what we are trying to achieve. He thinks it needs more analysis. He agreed with Commissioner Gordon. Commissioner Brown agreed with Commissioner Gordon. She does not understand what the impetus is to change this. Craig Benedict said it came up three years ago with a rezoning, and he, Paul Thames, and Dianne Reid have been working on this to figure out what could be done in this area. He said that having one use in this area was not beneficial. Commissioner Brown asked why we would want this to be a condo or apartment area. This is a huge switch from an economic development area. She recalls that when this was approved, there was a notion that this had been set aside for long term economic development. She said that when the Leture rezoning came up, there became insecurity about why it was not being developed. She said that it was supposed to be a set aside for long term economic development. She thinks there needs to be a really good design. Discussion ensued about the mixed use possibility in this area. Commissioner Brown said that she has not bought into the idea that people want to live where they work. She thinks that people want to take public transportation to work. Commissioner Carey said that he does buy into living and working in proximity and he thinks we should consider mixed use options. An example of this is the area around UNC-CH. He said that if density is placed here, then it can be prevented in other areas that we want to preserve. He agrees with the step-down approach. Commissioner Gordon said that there needs to be a lot of thinking about the concept behind what we want in these economic development districts and how high- density residential would fit in. Commissioner Halkiotis said that there was a similar discussion when this district was created. He remembers there being a split vote when the districts were created. He would like to see the staff bring back as many options as possible. He is not an advocate of the huge multi-family complexes. He has not had a 10-15 year vision for this place because nothing has happened in this area for years. He is still upset about the people that got left behind in the small mobile home park because they could not connect to the sewer line that Hancor controlled that the County helped to finance. There area some issues in this area with affordable housing and economic development. He said that there needs to be a work session about this issue. Chair Jacobs agreed with Commissioner Halkiotis. This item was left open until the next quarterly public hearing.