6_5_24 Planning Board Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Approved 7.10.24 to share the knowledge that our engineers have provided to help others keep their power on. That's just an example 1624 that came to mind. 1625 1626 Whitney Watson: Okay. What for me was missing in the narrative are ways in which public transportation or 1627 other kinds of transportation will be addressed or provided for the residents. I get that it's only a few miles down 54 1628 to Chapel Hill and Carrboro, but if somebody's got a medical appointment it can be tricky, and they're still shopping, 1629 so I guess I'm sort of questioning perhaps the assumptions of the traffic analysis in saying, oh no, there won't be any 1630 increase in traffic or virtually none. 1631 1632 Scott Radway As I heard the question before about what Fiddlehead might add to or support within the rural node 1633 is there is existing gas station and mini mart and the nursery, Piedmont, and other things that are in there, and I know 1634 for a fact that already we do that as we individually and as other members. So I think what you're doing is putting 1635 purchasing power in for some of the neighborhood's things that frankly you don't find anyplace else in the county 1636 within a half a mile of where you live. So if that was the question about what might be the impact on those 1637 businesses I would think it would be positive. The transportation piece, we had conversations with NCDOT and we 1638 had conversations with the County and with the transportation department and other things like that. We are very 1639 interested in being able to have bus service out this far in the county. What we don't have yet is a route structure and 1640 a number of other things that don't usually happen unless there's actually people there to do something for, and so 1641 one of the reasons that we are excited about that, there's an opportunity out here that with 285 or 300 people over 1642 the time of the project, that will provide enough mass at one location, and specifically we've talked about having a 1643 bus entrance or a bus stop that would be in location right at the entrance point which then is accessible to other 1644 people. We've talked about how to do a park and ride when there would be a demand and an opportunity within the 1645 bus system to get there, how to do a supportive use like a park and ride. There's a minimal impact around there. 1646 The other part of it is we have designed a location within the center of the development as specifically designed 1647 around the dimensions and requirements of what the County now has as the busses that are used for a call in and 1648 pickup dial-a-ride and things like that, so this is just one of the many things that you got to ask the questions to us 1649 because the information is, it's in there, but it's buried pretty far. Not because we want it to be buried but because 1650 there is so many different things. 1651 1652 Whitney Watson: So one of the things that showed up often in the narrative was this comment about affordable 1653 housing, and we've heard a project budget, but what do you anticipate an individual dwelling unit might go for? 1654 1655 Scott Radway: Well I guess the best answer for that is 2 years ago, if I had guessed the answer it would be 1656 wrong. But what we're looking for in the process is a dwelling unit's about 1,200 to 1,500 square feet, two bedrooms, 1657 small footprint, single floor as possible and other things like that and so all of those are pieces that are to reduce the 1658 cost of development in what we now see from national builders which are two stories, and they want four bedrooms, 1659 so they've got to have so many feet on the ground floor to support four bedrooms and that kind of stuff, so we're 1660 looking at a housing product that can be downsized into and it can be done with not all of the extra corners and 1661 windows and all of the other things that go into houses that are two and three stories and are $600,000. That's not 1662 an answer. The answer is we don't know for sure what it will be because we're looking at being out there about 2 1663 years if the project gets approved, getting the wells approved, getting the wastewater treatment approved, going 1664 through all of the preliminary site work which includes identifying – we have to do the tree survey and doing a lot of 1665 other things. I'm not trying to avoid the question or avoid the answer. It's just not quite possible to do that, but we do 1666 know that two-bedroom houses on one floor are going to be more affordable than four bedroom houses and two 1667 bathrooms on two floors, and so we're aiming at that piece. We've talked with the County about affordable housing 1668 and how that mechanism can come into place or not, and we have not figured out if it can be done through the 1669 budget process and through the funding of affordable housing. So, it's two pieces. One is how to reduce the cost for 1670 the people who are going to move there, which is one aspect, and the other is in a broader sense of what's affordable 1671 housing, and we don't have an answer for that yet. 1672 1673