7_10_24 Planning Board Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Approved 8.7.24 requirements for the housing they choose. The leadership is working hard to keep costs 1203 under control so that living at Fiddlehead is financially attainable for those of us of modest 1204 means. The plan provides for a variety of housing sizes, including studios and one-1205 bedroom units, which is in line with that goal. Up to now, news about H4D has spread 1206 entirely by word of mouth and through educational orientations. It's a grass roots effort, 1207 people empowered, and not a big developer. I urge you to approve it, please. 1208 1209 Aditi Watson: My name is Aditi Watson; I also go by Atula. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak. 1210 Me and my family moved here from Northern California, small town, and the place we 1211 were living in California was high land taxes and very high market for real estate so we 1212 were searching for a community that we could fulfill our dreams of homesteading and 1213 living sustainably and coming to North Carolina and finding the little place on Goldmine 1214 Loop and Morrow Mill Road was exactly everything we had been envisioning for a decade 1215 of searching, and we found that the like-minded neighbors and the whole area suited 1216 exactly our vision. For the past 3½ years we've been living homesteading, our farm 1217 gardens. I am concerned about this project greatly, because it affects so many aspects of 1218 our life on Goldmine Loop. For one, Goldmine Loop is a beautiful setting for bike riding, 1219 taking walks, I’ll even meet my neighbors along the way and it's just a beautiful place to 1220 be and live, and I really would be sad to see the whole lifestyle of the rural community 1221 jeopardized by this project and everyone, all my neighbors have spoken so well and so 1222 good, so I don't really have so much more to say, but I'm wholly against this development, 1223 thank you. 1224 1225 David D’Agostino: Hi, I'm David D'Agostino, I live on Labrador Lane, with my partner, Audra Bott, and I'm 1226 neighbors with Dan Eddleman and Ralph Warren and I completely agree with everything 1227 they say, and I'm against the development. I do feel like they're not really giving us 1228 straight answers and, I would love to see an age in place community for 35 people which 1229 was originally presented to us. That's a lot different now and there's really no confirmation 1230 that this is going to be a place for people over 55. That’s all I have to say, thank you. 1231 1232 Carol Mellon: Hi, I'm Carol Mellon and I'd just like to say that agricultural and forested lands are 1233 precious finite resources that should not be permanently marred by developments that will 1234 be redundant within decades. This isn't the 1980s when birth rates were still high. 1235 Demographic trends, including the two upcoming so-called academic cliffs or sharp 1236 declines in the number of college age persons and the coming decline in the number of 1237 55-plus persons due to the aging of the baby boomer generation, will result in a multi-unit 1238 housing surplus in communities like Chapel Hill. They will drive a projected surplus of 1239 rural housing of any kind since the infrastructure and amenities of cities will continue to 1240 attract the majority of home seekers. Retirement communities such as these are highly 1241 leveraged with a relatively high default rate. The Wall Street Journal has reported that 1242 they have become less popular in recent decades and particularly since the start of the 1243 pandemic. The power of retirement community borrowers to issue federally tax-exempt 1244 bonds, however, creates a perverse incentive for investors chasing yields to put money 1245 even into projects that simply are not viable over the long term. Many planned retirement 1246 communities have had to open their doors to the general public due to lack of interest 1247 from their target population and I think we may have seen that here or have had to greatly 1248 increase planned fees to compensate for the increasing costs of labor that is now in short 1249 supply. Others have been purchased by hospital corporations, effectively becoming 1250 healthcare centers. Were this to happen in our area we fear that the nearby land would 1251