Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 17:21:44 -0500
From: Gene Galin
Subject: Videos from Lawrence Group presentation on Chatham Park
WARNING WILL ROBINSON: This post is a tad long.
I attended the Monday evening Pittsboro Town meeting where Craig Lewis of the Lawrence Group make his presentation of their report on Chatham Park.
I video recorded the presentation. I have started breaking up the video into 5-7 minute segments and posting them on YouTube. Starting with segment 2 I have incorporated the powerpoint slides Craig used.
As of right now there are three segments up
Segment 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Segment 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Segment 3 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Folks are welcome to use the video clips for reference and embed the videos. However, we do not grant permission to slice and dice the video clips.
You can view the Lawrence Group Chatham Park PowerPoint presentation at
http://pittsboronc.gov/
A copy of the report is available at
http://pittsboronc.gov/
I have posted the Lawrence Group responses to Pittsboro mayor’s questions about Chatham Park at
http://www.chathamjournal.com/
You can find the Chatham Park Planned Development District Master Plan (Proposed) at
http://pittsboronc.gov/index.
Jack Stevens shot the entire presentation from the back corner of the courtroom. His video of the meeting is available at http://youtu.be/5M9xQhNDU18
I’ll be posting additional links to the videos as I upload them at the Chatham BBS at
http://chatham-county-nc.com/
I will also try to add segment summaries as time permits on the BBS (sample below, won’t chew up lots of chatlist space with these in the future).
Summary of Craig Lewis’ comments in segment 1 –
The reality is our world is changing. These days we know we are not in competition with our next door neighbor. Siler City is not your competition. Competition is somewhere in China, somewhere in Germany, somewhere in Australia, somewhere in India.
You are competing for jobs, you are competing for precious resources, workforce and people. All those things are different than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. Some communities change and they decline. Some communities change and they grow. No community changes and stays exactly the same. So you have choices to make.
The review process had a pretty aggressive time schedule. Apologies if we missed anything. Tried to be as comprehensive in our review as possible. Did not have opportunities to talk to everyone who has potentially an
opinion or some evidence.
Reviewed record that Pittsboro had which is pretty exhaustive.
Task is to provide recommendations as to where you are in the planned development district ordinance and the planned development district plan.
Number of key considerations we are looking at. This project is located in an area that has some environmental challenges. Because it is between an existing community and a water supply, watershed area. It is a large project. One of the largest in North Carolina history. One of the largest right now in North and South Carolina. Project in Summerville, SC will dwarf this project; they have about 80 square miles. This is a small project in some respects. [laughter]
We know future development here is going to be limited by serving it with water and sewer. Sewer is really the number 1 determinant on development capacity around our country. We really have not yet come up with real viable alternatives, although the technologies are changing.
Your land use plan has said that this is an area that you wanted development to occur. It’s less clear what that development will look like. You have substantial road infrastructure that you have had planned largely in correspondence with the land use plan. You know growth is coming. It’s coming largely from every direction. Coming from Chapel Hill, Carrboro area, it’s coming from Wake County, it’s coming from Fort Bragg. You are in the center of it.
Change is inevitable. It’s how you manage that change over time.
There are significant deficiencies in the current master plan. But not all of them have to be answered today. It really does lack a coherent vision. It really does not describe what the project is long-term. That’s a very important element. A project this size can be well designed and it can be very complementary to this community and build on it. Or it can be continuation of sprawl. And you really do need to make a decision about
that.
We have lots of options and alternatives we can look at in the region of what works and what doesn’t.
We are talking about the phasing and infrastructure of when parts of this project happens, an element called Development agreement, which is a critical component of this process.
Some of the things to think about. The PUD ordinance that you have in place today is perfectly adequate. Lots of communities use something very similar. Lots of communities use what is called a conditional district to manage large development projects around the state, which are legal. What you are doing is perfectly okay. The elements that you are asking for are perfectly normal. It is a good tool to use for a project like this. Back in 2006-07, the general assembly did say when you are considering a rezoning, which is what this is, your planning board really needs to take a look at it and say “This is consistent with our adopted plans or it’s not consistent with our adaptive plans.” It’s just a statement they need to make.
Does it mean that you all have to abide by it? The general statues explicitly say that it really doesn’t matter. It’s something you have to acknowledge, it’s something you have to entertain as part of the discussion.