Swearing in ceremonies for the mayor and six commissioners took top billing, but after the formalities commissioners did provide a procedural endorsement for a senior citizen housing project and schedule public hearings guaranteed to kick-start agenda activities in the upcoming new year.
The high-density project, designed to include 108 residential rental units for those 62 and older near Caldwell Station in northern Huntersville, has been on the community's radar for several years, according to Principal Planner David Peete. The resolution adopted by the board supports the efforts of Douglas Development and Caldwell Station Venture in their application to the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Housing Consortium seeking affordable tax credits and financial assistance to construct the project.
The previously reviewed and approved version of the project, according to Peete, includes up to four apartment-style buildings, each no more than three stories tall, to be developed on a 6.4-acre tract off Will Knox Road 160 feet west of the intersection with N.C. 115. Peete said the project is not the standard apartment complex originally proposed, but a separate project that has been, from the outset, designed as a community for seniors.
Peete said agencies that oversee funding applications want projects to already have expressed approval and support from the governmental jurisdictions where the projects will be built, and that the board's action at the meeting was an important part of the application process for the developers.
The senior living development is compatible with town policies encouraging affordable housing projects close to existing and future transit lines. The proposed Red Line Regional Rail is directly across the street from the site, and the proposed Sam Furr station is less than a mile to the south.
The public hearings scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 3, will address one municipal issue simmering for several months and help clear the way for a new medial facility designed to ease the burden on the region's existing psychiatric care services.
One public hearing topic will be a request by Jonathan Yates to amend the town's zoning ordinance to allow – with conditions – the placement of commercial communication towers within rural zoning districts. Yates' proposal to erect a 199-foot cellular telephone tower has been discussed at several town board sessions, and some commissioners have expressed concerns and staunch opposition to those plans.
Yates represents a firm that wants to erect the tower on a small piece of land off Mt. Holly-Huntersville Road. The proposal was the topic of public hearings and several board discussions during the summer and is not, as presented, an allowed use within the rural zoned district. In September, Yates changed direction to seek the text amendment to the ordinance rather than a variance. The hearing has been delayed several times.
The other public hearing will consider a request from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority (Carolina's Healthcare Systems) to rezone 17.35 acres at the corner of N.C. 115 and Verhoeff Drive. The request is to change the zoning from neighborhood residential to a campus institutional conditional district to allow for the construction of $32-million, 66-bed psychiatric hospital that would open sometime in 2013.
