The Chatham County Board of Commissioners met on Monday continue last month’s public hearing for Fearrington Preserve, a proposed mixed-use housing community located off of Andrew Store Road. While aiming to bring affordable housing north of Pittsboro, it has been met with continued scrutiny from residents and county staff alike.
The proposed 383-acre compact community is south of Briar Chapel, a planned Chapel Hill community, and many of its residents spoke out against it at the May 18 meeting. Their comments centered on the strain the project could put on the neighborhood, surrounding roads, and the environment, adding other community efforts to stop the project’s approval, including the Fearrington Preserve Community Opposition Group and a petition garnering nearly 800 signatures.
Most shared concerns for how the project could add about 630 residential units to already busy roads, particularly with county staff noting how NCDOT road widening projects would likely be unfeasible due to wetlands on the proposed site.
“My daughter at the middle school is currently in a class of 30 students to one teacher,” Jacquelyn Watson said, a resident in close proximity to the site. “And with the 600 proposed homes that’s going to be put in, it’s going to place not only a strain on the roads, but most importantly the schools and the children are at the base of that. And I don’t want that to happen.
“I very respectfully believe that this proposal is not in our benefit for the local community,” she continued. “It feels like the burden of the project will fall on the existing community, while the primary benefit goes to the developer.”
The Fearrington Preserve concept plan, as included in the April 20 public hearing materials. The neighborhood, which is directly to the south of Briar Chapel, would be built in “pods” for maximum efficiency, according to the developer. (Photo via Fearrington Property Development LLC.)
Briar Chapel Neighborhood Association President Jo Ellen Hill said even after numerous transportation impact assessments, the most recent report still does not include the potential impact to her neighborhood. Lifelong Chatham resident Sasha Washington echoed that sentiment, which was shared by many community speakers.
“These roads cannot afford to have more traffic or growth,” Washington said. “Imagine four schools trying to release students and then coming in and out of a development which sits right in the middle of it all. It simply cannot happen. Not to mention a creek resting along the lines.”
One of the largest tributaries to the Haw River, Pokeberry Creek runs along most of the site’s eastern boundary. The development’s proximity of its wastewater treatment site to the natural feature is one of several concerns shared by residents pushing back online. During the public hearings, the public commenters and Chatham commissioners alike formally criticized the application for not providing information on how and when required mitigation of the creek would happen, as unstable portions of it have led to water degradation, erosion, and downstream flooding.
While commending the latest plan to conserve more than 80 acres of the creek and provide a long-term management plan, Anna Rhesa Versola Kallam still shared how she is worried about the increased flood risk of adding to the already near-three thousand residential dwellings located along the creek. Raymond Ciabattoni said he is concerned about the remediation plan’s lack of enforceability.
“The creek restoration is genuinely promising, but by the presenter’s own admission, the upstream work depends on grant funding that hasn’t been secured,” Ciabattoni said. “And the downstream mitigation requires further regulatory approvals. If creek restoration is the public benefit that justifies this project, it should be bonded — with real money in escrow and clear remedies if it doesn’t happen.”
Another key concern shared by Briar Chapel’s community members included the potential cost impact Fearrington Preserve’s lacking recreational areas and greenspace could have on its neighbors. With Briar Chapel’s connected trail network open to the community, Stormwater Program Manager Taylor Burton shared last month how it could be difficult to achieve something similar at Fearrington due the proposed site’s floodable areas.
“If you’re going to have an HOA for this community, it needs a place to gather,” Briar Chapel Community Association Director Carole Houk added. “We estimate, conservatively, that our residents in Briar Chapel could subsidize the cost for this extended community, just the one adjacent to us, by over $200,000 a year…which would be over $1 million over 5 years and $2.4 million over ten years — an additional usage of our infrastructure that we pay to maintain.”
The latest site plan shared on May 18 includes the potential for a pedestrian trail and an amenity area near the Briar Chapel community. However, Chatham County Zoning Administrator Angela Plummer said the addition of an amenity at the north would require reconfiguration of affordable units — a driving force of the project. The project aims to bring between 32 to 72 affordable units, but the meeting saw themes of the project’s overreliance on the affordability component to sell a project otherwise rejecting the intent of the county’s Compact Community Ordinance (CCO).
Created to foster high-density walkable communities, connected by greenspace, trails, and commercial, the project’s application requests to waive the CCO’s requirements for viewshed buffers and potentially the commercial component saw the most contention from staff and community members alike. On behalf of the development, attorney Nick Robinson said not rezoning the site could result in only 400 non-affordable residential units, but Shelley Colbert called the numerous waivers a “misuse of rezoning.”
“The essence of the woefully inadequate site plan consists of five discrete subdivisions cobbled together to take advantage of a zoning alternative not available without waivers or decreased density,” Colbert said. “The submission surprisingly suggests that the commercial area may not even be built at all.”
Updated from April, the latest site plan includes a potential commercial space south of Andrew Store Road. However, Plummer explained how one version of the site plan requires that space to achieve the 72 affordable units.
“But there is not an agreement that the county has been able to solidify at this point, and that is a major component of the Compact Community Ordinance,” she said. “Part of the site plan changes that we have been made aware of is about the affordable housing section. If this goes forward, then they’re going to have to ask for a 100% waiver of commercial for a compact community, meaning there would be none.”
During the board meeting, Chatham County Commissioner Karen Howard shared her skepticism on the request to waive the commercial component.
“This gives me a little concern,” she said, “just because as we think about affordable housing and the need for really robust investment in affordable housing… that sort of concurrent challenge of adding that many more car-dependent households in a place where — ideally, for me — a big part of the goal of the CCO is to have commercial and other things proximate to it, right?”
The board passed a 3-2 motion to continue the public hearing in July, with commissioners David Delaney and Franklin Gomez Flores being the dissenting votes. To hear the full discussion and public hearing from Monday, May 18, click here.
Featured image via Fearrington Property Development LLC.
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