Business

Developer back for third try for Horse Shoe Farm permit

By Bill Moss, Published: January 10, 2018

HORSE SHOE — A Miami developer who has been turned back twice in applications for large-scale building plans has filed a revised master plan for 132 residential dwellings at Horse Shoe Farm.

It’s John Turchin’s third attempt to develop the former horse and cattle farm land and his fourth at-bat overall. Most recently, in October, the Henderson County Planning Board killed a separate request, to build 299 dwellings on a cow pasture on McKinney Road in Etowah. The Etowah rezoning decision came 10 months after the Board of Commissioners rejected Turchin’s original request to rezone the Horse Shoe Farm land for 220 units. And although Turchin won preliminary approval from the Planning Board for a 198-unit development at Horse Shoe Farm, he had dropped that project in favor of the Etowah development.

The revised plan for the 85-acre Horse Shoe farm land across from the Tamarac subdivision reduces the number of dwellings by 70, carves out some outparcels with existing homes and drops the density to 1.55 units per acre, from 2.3 units. Revised totals include 74 duplex units, 51 triplex units, a guest suite over an existing barn, three single-family homes, 96 commercial parking spaces and 264 residential parking spaces.

In his two previous proposals, Turchin had talked about tying on to the Etowah Sewer Co. for sewer service or treating sewage on site. In the revised application, he proposes an onsite drip system to treat sewage. The private treatment system would require approval of state water quality regulators, something Turchin has not managed to obtain in any of his first three tries to develop land on the French Broad River.

A master plan is the first hurdle he would have to clear. Although he does not need rezoning, he would still have to get state approval for the sewage treatment plan and add a left turn lane for the development. The next step would require Turchin to file a development plan, which is more detailed than a master plan.

“He doesn’t have a development plan approval,” said Autumn Radcliff, Henderson County senior planner. “He can’t start moving dirt yet.”

The county’s Technical Review Committee takes up the application on Jan. 16 and the county Planning Board is scheduled to consider it on Jan. 18.