1.3.24 Planning Board Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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APPROVED WITH AMENDMENT 2.7.24 598 need one in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area. Chapel Hill and Orange County would like to jointly develop one. 599 So that's the property we're talking about. 600 601 Beth Bronson: And the entrance to the east of those are privately owned, or there's a railroad track 602 there? 603 604 David Stancil: I think the Town of Chapel Hill owns the property that's further to the right of the two 605 Orange County labeled properties on this map, and then you're at Millhouse Road and the railroad tracks. But 606 as you can see, the concern that we addressed, and I hope that we found a solution to, you can see on this 607 map that the existing access road that was done years and years ago for Crown Castle to be able to access 608 their tower severs 20 acres of our site from the rest of it, and I can count on my hands the number of times I've 609 seen a Crown Castle truck go back to the cell tower. So, that's not really been an issue for us, but if that were 610 to become something that was much more frequently used, and we had parking or soccer fields, for example, 611 we don't want kids crossing a commercial driveway to go back and forth between future fields and parking. 612 And so that was the concern that we expressed in our memo. We looked at the possibly of diving down to the 613 southern boundary line adjacent to the grey area on this map. Not a great solution, but as mentioned earlier 614 we had a meeting today. We did identify the fact that there is another access easement on the northern part of 615 the property. This is the way in for the Crown Castle tower which is being proposed for use here. We had, in 616 our letter, suggested diving down and not separating this 20-acre section from the rest of the park. But, as of 617 today, I think we have a potential solution which will use this easement and wrap around the back side of the 618 soccer fields and the future facility. We haven't done a master plan yet because it wasn't time to build the 619 park. We've stopped doing those because we ran into situations where we had an adopted master plan and 620 10 years later, we were getting around to the construction, and things would change. So, we try to do master 621 plans now closer to the point of construction, and that's why we envision doing that in the next year or two for 622 this currently planned construction. But, what we have always envisioned is back here, backing up to Duke 623 Forest, this part of the property has nice hard woods, and is much more like Duke Forest than the rest of the 624 property. These areas in the front were former farm fields. This was the old Julia Blackwood farm. And so, 625 what we would like to do, and what we have talked today, and I think is a possible solution, is come around the 626 back side of the fields. 627 628 Beth Bronson: You don't anticipate development to the west? 629 630 David Stancil: No, this, I think, would be trails and hard wood buffer to Duke Forest. So, the anticipated 631 area of development of this property is in this area here. 632 633 Beth Bronson: Duke Forest does not have anything that backs up to those properties? 634 635 David Stancil: Duke Forest has access, their area actually goes right off the map to the south and to the 636 east. 637 638 Beth Bronson: They have separate access on that Orange County property? 639 640 David Stancil: No, they do not. There was originally a continuation of this easement that I've talked 641 about already that goes to the Duke property, but I'm not, without getting into some legal territory that I should 642 not get into, it's not clear to us whether this part of that easement continues to exist. But suffice to say, that 643 Duke has the ability to access this property from a number of other directions. This is also,just so you know, 644 this is a part of Duke Forest, the Blackwood Division of Duke Forest, that has the NASA research equipment 645 on it, so it's not one of the areas that's active for recreational purposes. There are not a lot of trails here. In 646 fact, they're kind of discouraged for that purpose because there is a lot of scientific research going on back in 647 this part of the property, so there's not a lot of access need in that area.