Small Area Plan 1995 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Introduction At the request of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, the students in the Planning 223 Land Use Workshop were given the assignment of evaluating three land use design alternatives in the Stoney Creek Basin Area. The design alternatives and report are intended to assist the Stoney Creek Basin Planning Group, which was formed to prepare a land use plan and implementation recommendations for a small area of the county. The 4,696 -acre Stoney Creek Basin lies within the three county area, including Orange, Durham and Wake Counties, that makes up the Triangle region in central North Carolina (see Map 1). It is located two miles southeast of the Town of Hillsborough and five miles north of the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro in Orange County (see Map 2). The area is bounded by Interstate 85 to the north and Interstate 40 less than one mile to the west and defined primarily by the drainage basin of Stoney Creek. The edges of the planning area were drawn to include entire properties, when lot lines extended beyond the boundary of the actual drainage basin. The county has designated two Economic Development Districts directly to the east and the west of the planning area. There are currently 795 dwelling units in the planning area: 589 are single family detached homes and 206 are mobile homes. The planning area has an estimated population of 2,135 residents as of April, 1995. The current land uses are rural residential and subdivision development, rural buffer in the southern portions, limited commercial along main roads (although there is a 33 -acre parcel zoned commercial on a secondary road), and agricultural. There are 1,999 acres available for development in the basin. Because of its proximity to existing and future employment centers and transportation, as well as the available land supply, this area is expected to grow rapidly in the near future. A small area plan is needed to manage growth in an appropriate manner, and this report .is designed to provide a foundation for such a plan. Three land use alternatives were studied by the workshop class: 1. Conventional Design Plan - based upon the use of existing zoning regulations and the continuation of current development patterns. 2. Density - Neutral Design Plan - based upon envisioning cluster development as a - strategy for the preservation of large open spaces and environmentally sensitive land,utilizing general open space design principles proposed by Randall Arendt and others as explained in Rural Rv T)esiQn (Arendt, 1994b) and Desi nin en STace Dev_elloments in 'Russex County I)f- aware (Arendt, 1993) . Stoney Creek Basin Area Plan, 1