Agenda - 04-06-1989 - Laserfiche WebLink

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„ April 10, 1989 RECEIVED Orange County Board of Commissioners: Moses-Car Chair, and Steven Belkiotis, John Bartwell, Shirley Marshall, and Don Willhoit Orange County Courthouse Hillsborough, North Carolina 27278 To The Board of Commissioners: • We attended the public hearings on February 27 and April 6, 1989, which considered two requests for redesignation of large parcels of land along New Hope Church Road in and near the Rural Buffer. We strenuously ame.. the alteration of the current Land Use Plan to accamnodate these two requests. The first request by University Station Associates would change the zoning designation of 527 acres along Old North Carolina Highway 10 from its current designation in the Joint Land Use Plan as Rural Residential-Agricultural Use- Resource Conservation to Ten-Year Transition (jumping over several possible zoning categories along the way). University Station Associates would then be able to develop the land without incurring the expense of providing water and sewer connections, and would instead have the town of Hillsborough (which is perversely agreeable to carrying these costs) pay for the construction of a very substantial water and sewer connection to this area. We would like to register our opposition to this change in land use designation for several reasons: (1) The area in question is only one mile away from the Rural Buffer and very near a segment of Duke FOrest, and really should retain its present designation, one that still permits some development. Changes that would allow high density development would greatly damage the whole idea of a rural buffer between Chapel Hill and Billsborough. (2) The area in question does not fit the criteria for Ten-Year Transition areas in any case. A member of the Orange County Planning Department who handles current planning told us on the morning of February 27 that Ten-Year Transition areas are meant to be those adjacent to municipalities and along Bighways 70 and 85 where they anticipate rapid development and urbanization within 10 years. Insofar as we can read our fuzzy photocopy of the Land Use Plan map, the acreage along Old NC 10 would be an urbanizing blob quite far fran any other transition area (even from Twenty- Year Transition areas), most of which are already "attached” to Hillsborough. The area in question is a hilly ridge away fran 85 and accessible only fran the south (Old NC 10 and New Hope Church Road), not 85, so it is not really part of the 1-85 strip between Durham and Hillsborough. Thus the justification for extending such a designation to this area is doubly questionable. (3) The change in land use designationudll allow the developers (who are probably really just land brokers) to reap profits while transferring the costs of water, sewer, and additional stress an the roads and local environment to Binsborough, Orange COunty, and North Carolina. The development as now planned has already undergone changes that suggest that University Station Associates are really land brokers, not developers,