Small Area Plan 1995 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Executive Summary This report is the final step of the first phase of a small area planning process for a portion of Orange County, North Carolina. The report was prepared for the Stoney Creek Basin Planning Group, comprised of local officials and residents of the basin, to help the group evaluate development options for the basin. It describes three design alternatives for future development in Stoney Creek Basin. The alternatives are: a conventional development design, which would continue the subdivision patterns that presently exist in the county, an open -space or "density - neutral" design, which clusters lots so as to maximize the preservation of open space and is based on principles developed by Randall Arendt and others, and a neo- traditional, transit- oriented design, which proposes a village core focused on a rail station, utilizing concepts developed by Peter Calthorpe. The report also assesses the expected impacts of each development concept on the resources within the basin and services provided the county. The Planning Group will utilize the information in this report, together with additional information to be provided by the Orange County Planning Department in subsequent phases, to recommend a development strategy for the Stoney Creek-Basin to the Orange County Board of Commissioners in 1996. The Planning Process The report begins with a suitability analysis. The purpose of the suitability analyis is to determine which areas of the basin are suitable for development. Further, the process is used to determine the appropriateness of a given tract of land for a specified use. The report explains the decision making process for how each area of the basin is planned and the total acreage of those areas. Each design team then identified features that could create potential constraints or opportunities for their design. This analysis was facilitated by the use of the county's geographic information system which allowed for computer - generated maps to be created. In next step, each design team created conceptual maps illustrating a potential layout for future development, based on the preservation and development objectives of each alternative. The preservation objectives noted specific environmental, historic, and /or cultural features to be considered, while the development objectives focused on the design goals for the completed development. For the conventional development alternative, general. objectives included the protection of the residential character of the area, and providing density transitions from existing neighborhoods. For the density - neutral alternative, objectives included preserving 50 % of the buildable land as permanent open space and locating lots adjacent to open space to Stoney Creek Basin Small Area Plan