News

DEVELOPER WINS ROUND 1 IN ETOWAH VALLEY

Homeowners listen to a hearing on development plans at Etowah Valley Golf & Resort.

By Bill Moss, Published: October 19, 2023

The Henderson County Planning Board voted 6-3 on Thursday to OK a master plan for up to 400 homes at Etowah Valley Golf & Resort, advancing a development plan that is sure to face more opposition down the road.

More than 200 people turned out at Thomas Auditorium as the board took up a developer's application to build the 200-lot subdivision at the Etowah Valley Golf & Resort. The meeting was a continuation of a five-hour meeting in August during which the board heard from homeowners opposed to the development and from the applicant, Tribute Construction of Wilmington, N.C.

Board chair Steve Dozier opened the meeting by urging the audience to respect an "orderly process." A sheriff's deputy was on hand in case  of unruly behavior. If someone gets too emotional he or she will be asked to "sit down and calm down if you can," Dozier said, upon penalty of being escorted out of the room.

Voting to approve the master plan were Hunter Marks, Jared Ownbey, Linda Bradley, Jim Miller and Steve Dozier. Voting no were Rick Livingston, Bruce Hatfield and Robert Griffin.

Originally built in 1964 as an 18-hole course on the old Moland-Drysdale Corp. brick plant land, Etowah Valley Golf & Resort expanded to 27 holes in 1987-88. The 174-acre site also includes a hotel, two cottages, a public restaurant, event space, a swimming pool and a driving range. The new subdivision plan includes:

• Two-hundred lots of up to two dwellings per lot.
• Two new access points off U.S. 64 and one off Brickyard Road.
• 10,900 linear feet of private roads with a 50-foot right-of-way and 20-foot roadway.
• 40 acres of open space, or 48 percent of the 83.5-acre site, and 10,910 feet of sidewalks and walking trails.
• A 6,000-square-foot

After reviewing the project, the NCDOT said it would require the developer to make improvements to four intersections in the area — Brevard Road-Brickyard Road, Brevard Road-North Greenwood Forest Drive, Brickyard Road-Holly Springs Road and Brickyard Road-McKinney Road — and spelled out design guidelines for the new access points.

The main difference in the latest revised plan was that the developer has added a second access drive on Brevard for a total of three access points, county planner Matt Champion said on Thursday evening. Dozier and the board agreed to give each side 30 minutes to present its case.

Craig Justus, the attorney for the applicant, focused his core argument on what the law says the county can or can't control. He made the following points:

• "There are moments in all (the opponents' documents) of which I very respectfully say is just going to lead you astray."
• State law does not permit the county to reject the project because the developer does not plan to make off-site traffic improvements the opponents want. "When it comes to traffic, your focus should only be on the driveway connections that provide access to the development." Conditions of the driveway permits are controlled by the NCDOT, not Henderson County.
• Homeowners' assertion that "if you change this property from a golf course to something else, it will hurt us" is not legally a reason the planning board could say no to the master plan. Denying the subdivision OK based on that opinion is "unfair to the owner of the golf course and unfair to the developer" because "your leaders"  have zoned the property to allow residential development.

Tikkun A.S. Gottschalk, an attorney for Etowah Valley homeowners, argued that the plan before the board did not meet the requirements of a master plan. He then yielded the floor to Chris Cunningham, a traffic engineer. Cunningham said:

• A traffic impact analysis does not take into account other developable areas on the site that could add more trips per day in the future.
• Four-hundred duplexes would add a traffic load that current road conditions cannot accommodate. "Safety falls on y'all. It does not fall on congestion management" of the NCDOT.
• Most motorists will use N.C. 280, not U.S. 64, because 280 is a four-lane road. "It's not just about accessing U.S. 64," but is about too much traffic on Brickyard Road, Greenwood Forest Drive, Holly Springs Road, McKinney Road, Turnpike Road and others. Those narrow roads are prone to cause "run off the road crashes." The "effective lane width" is narrow because the roads have no shoulders. "It's already not safe today. It needs to be improved today."
• The increased traffic will be a threat to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. "There's no sidewalks, no bicycle lanes, nothing out there infrastructure-wise to prevent somebody from getting hit."
• Bridges carrying the local traffic are 63 to 81 years old, and three out of four are functionally obsolete, according to NCDOT's ratings.

Several critical points of opposition were kicked down the road. The master plan before the board was conceptual. A development plan will need to contain more detail on things like the sewer plant, which is proposed but not yet authorized by the state, and traffic.

"As a responsible Planning Board member, I think that each one of us should consider more than what the applicant is telling us we are allowed to consider," board member Rick Livingston said. "If something clearly doesn't work, doesn't fit, clearly is not a good idea, why pass it to the next step? To me there' a lot more to it than just checking a box.

"I’ve talked to hundreds of people that live in this area that will be impacted by this development,” he said. “I think it's important to note that not a single person, not one that I've spoken to, has been in favor of this development. Is that permissible for me to consider that? Honestly, I don't care, but I do consider that and I do consider that very important."

“The infrastructure is clearly not in place to support a development of this magnitude, nor does it have the potential to ever be in place," he added. "In my opinion, this development does not fit within the Henderson County comprehensive plan, and it certainly doesn't meet some of the LDC (land development code) standards. In my opinion, we have a clear and compelling evidence that has been provided by the Etowah group, which shows that this development is not appropriate for this location.”

Livingston and Bruce Hatfield both strongly condemned a letter Justus sent to the Planning Board spelling out the legal case for approving the master plan.

“I for one don’t appreciate it," Livingston said. "The intent of that letter, at least in my opinion, was to intimidate us and to tell us that we have no choice but to vote in favor of this project. I take issue with that, and I don't appreciate that.”

Hatfield added: "It was intimidating, it was bullying and I'm going to forward it to the state Bar."

“I have a problem with the flooding," he said. "I have a problem with people buying into a golf course community and being told we're taking at least nine holes away from you. That’s not what you bought into.”

But a majority of the board members said that the developer at this point had met the requirements for master plan approval.

“If you or I or anyone in Henderson County has a piece of property, we want to be able to go down to the planning department and talk to them and look at the land development code and decide what we could do with that property," Hunter Marks said. "And if that code tells me I can do something with that property and I meet the requirements of the code I should be able to do that with my property.”

Linda Bradley said: “As a lifelong resident of Henderson County as well I am grateful that people care and yet as a property owner, I do have to respect the law.” She added that of some 200 emails she had received “there were only a couple that were disrespectful and sadly one was from the applicant.”

Bill Lapsley, the County Commission's liaison to the Planning Board, assured the homeowners that commissioners were aware of the Etowah community's distress over the proposed development and went on to signal that they're open to lowering the density in the community when they adopt the new comp plan.

“I have already discussed with my colleagues this situation and its reflection on our land development code," he told the homeowners. "I think you'll be seeing some discussion at length amongst the commissioners about what we may do to revise our code not only in your area but across the county.”

Turning to the developers directly, he urged the team to find a path to a less-dense development.

“You could go to one unit per acre," he said. "Obviously, that has economic considerations for the developer. But I would present it to the developer, as soon as you leave tonight and as you prepare to go to this next stage that you would consider lowering that density to a number that might be more acceptable to the community.

"In the end, the community wants to be a good neighbor to you and you want to be a good neighbor to the community, and nothing could be worse, in my experience, for a developer to start a project out where the community doesn't have a good feeling. When that potential buyer goes into the Exxon station and asks the attendant, ‘What do you think about that development across the street?’ — you want them to say good things.”