Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

our meeting to order tonight and if you would mind bowing with me we'll open in prayer father we're very thankful to be here tonight we're thankful for your grace your mercy it's beautiful day all the good things that you do for us and what we're able to enjoy each and every day We're thankful for this community, we're thankful for the opportunity to serve our town, and we're thankful for all that you do to give us discernment, guidance, and grace as we go through these cases tonight. We ask for your help always, in Christ's name I pray, amen. And if you'd stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Again, thank you all for being here tonight. I've got just a couple of items to read here as we get the meeting started. First is regarding public comment. At our first meeting each month, we set aside some time to allow public comment from our citizens or anyone wanting to address the board. Each speaker is given three minutes in which to comment. Speakers are expected to be civil and respectful to the board in their language and presentation. It is the board's practice not to respond or engage in conversations with anyone who speaks in order to give the speaker the full amount of time to voice their concerns. If you raise a matter you would like addressed either by the board or by a town staff, please leave your name and contact information with the board's administrative assistant and someone will contact you. Please understand that state law prohibits us from discussing employee personnel matters with you. And my understanding is we have no one. Mr. Coley signed up tonight for general public comment?

No, sir.

Well, thank you very much. We'll move then to public comment as part of a public hearing. Unlike public comment regarding general matters held at the beginning of our first meeting of the month, public comment as part of a public hearing is meant to specifically address a particular agenda item being considered by the board. Those wishing to speak must sign up prior to the meeting online or by calling the town clerk. A public hearing entails a staff presentation of 15 minutes, an applicant presentation of 15 minutes, with both the staff and applicant having additional time to address any questions from the board. At the end of these presentations, I will call on the citizens who have signed up prior to the meeting. Each speaker from the public will have three minutes to speak and may not bank or lend time to another unless four or more people supporting the same position designate a single speaker to represent them. In such case, the designated speaker will be given six minutes to speak to the board. The total time for public comment will be limited to 30 minutes for the first 10 speakers, whichever occurs first. Once public comment ends, the applicant will have five minutes for rebuttal. With that, I would move us to item four, which is swearing in our new members and election of officers. So tonight, Mr. Peretz, we have you being sworn back in. And again, thank you for your recommitment to serve.

Thank you.

If you'll step forward, then Shane will swear you in there at the podium.

If you just want to read the oath here.

I, Gregory Peretz, do solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States, the Constitution and laws of North Carolina, and consistent therewith, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office as a planning board member, so help me God.

And if you'll sign.

Congratulations, Greg, and thank you again for your service. Now I'll ask the board, Carrie, for motions for chair and co-chair. We'll start with the co-chair position. Vice chair. Vice chair. Forgive me. Any nominations for vice chair or continue as is with Mr. Cole?

I make a motion to continue with Mr. Cole if he'll stay with us. He's done a wonderful job.

Watch. Be careful.

So we have a motion from Mr. Katz. Do we have a second? Have a second from Mr. Red Arrow. All in favor? All right. Thank you, Mr. Cole. Appreciate your service. Or continued service, I should say. And so now that we have a motion for chairman.

I agree. I'll second that. So we have a motion from Mr. Cole and a second from Mr. Katz. I need to make that motion again. I'm so sorry. I had my red light on. I'd like to make a motion to Steve to continue as our chairman for the next period of time. He's done a wonderful job, and I can't imagine anyone who would do a better job, quite frankly.

Excellent. And a repeat of the second.

All in favor? Well, thank you very much for your vote of confidence. I want to thank the board. I feel like we've got a wonderful group of participating members. And I'm thankful to be here, and it's a joy to be on board with all of you all. And so thanks for your commitment, and thanks for your service. With that, we'll move to, well, we'll move past public comment. We have none there. Adjustments to the agenda. Mr. Coley? We have none tonight. So with none, do we have a motion to adopt the agenda as presented? So moved. I have a motion from Mr. Katz. Do I have a second?

Second.

Second from Mr. Cole. All in favor? Agenda's adopted, so approval of minutes. I have a motion to approve the minutes as presented.

So moved.

So we have a motion from Mr. Peretz, second from Mr. Red Arrow. All in favor? Minutes are approved. Ms. Alston, statements on municipal authority.

All right. At the beginning of our meetings, we go over how the town receives its authority to act from the state. We are a hybrid state. Usually towns fall into one of two categories, either a home rule state or a Dillon's rule state. Home rule states municipalities have very broad powers to make their own rules and in Dillon's rule states municipalities can exercise only those powers that are expressly granted to them necessarily or fairly implied or incident to the powers expressly granted to them or that are essential to the municipality's purpose. North Carolina is neither a home rule state nor a Dillon's rule state but a hybrid and so We only exercise that authority that is specifically granted to us through our state statutes or through our charter. We have no inherent authority act on our own without that authority given through the state, through local bills, or for, like I said, our town charter. And the state legislature controls whether the state, a county, or a municipality has the authority over a service or governmental function. For examples, counties have exclusive responsibility for schools and social services. The state legislature determines through state statute what the town can or cannot do. And for example, the town cannot charge impact fees for development.

We'll continue directly into land use overview. So by right or base district development, all land is eligible to develop under local zoning regulations, which establish permitted uses, densities, and other associated development standards. Development complying with existing zoning is approved administratively by staff. We have our base district or by-right rezonings. So rezoning requests to a base zoning district. Such requests require approval by the town board. However, no conditions may be added. Our final type of land development is our conditional rezonings. Developers may voluntarily enter into conditional zoning districts to restrict use, densities, and other site features as depicted on a concept plan. Conditions may include site enhancements or community benefits, for example, increased buffers or residential design standards. Conditional rezonings require approval by the Board of Commissioners and become binding through a site-specific ordinance approved by the commissioners with an affidavit signed by the property owner.

Thank you very much, Mr. Coley, Ms. Alston. Any old business, Mr. Coley?

No, sir.

So no old business. So we'll move to item 11, new business. 11A is to consider a request to adopt an ordinance approving text amendment TA-2026-03. I'll ask the board for any conflicts in the matter. Being none, Mr. Coley.

Text Amendment 2603 for displays. The applicant is the town of Mooresville. The topic is displays. The purpose is to amend our UDO, our Unified Development Ordinance, to clarify and update display standards. This does support the strategic priority area of safety and community well-being for all and our strategic plan goal to support forward thinking in service to provide relevant cutting edge services. This amendment proposes two changes to the existing regulation. First, it expands the current display restrictions to include awnings on non-residential buildings, except during the seasonal period between November 1st and January 31st. Second, it establishes a display standard within the traditional downtown district, allowing rooftop and awning displays during the seasonal period and limits them to six feet in height. The proposed text, this is the current text in white, and the proposed changes are the highlighted section, and I'll just read the entire section for you. Displays and decorations shall not be installed on awnings or rooftops of buildings used for non-residential purposes, even if the display or decoration does not advertise a service or item for sale except between November 1st and January 31st. Within the traditional downtown district, when awnings and rooftop displays are decorated, or decorations are permitted under this section, such displays and decorations shall not exceed six feet in height as measured from the surface of the rooftop or awning on which they are installed. Give me a moment to digest that and then happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you, Mr. Coley. Are there any questions from the board or staff?

Mr. Cole, just to just for a little clarification, so outside of the downtown district, larger ones are permitted.

Yes. Any additional questions? And so this was a staff-presented text amendment, so there's no one. I don't think we had anyone. I'll open and close the public hearing on that. There was no one signed up to speak. No one has signed up. In particular. So if there's no further discussion, is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to recommend approval of TA-2026-03 as the amendment is consistent with the Towns 1 Mooresville plan by supporting high-quality community design, preserving community character, and improving clarity and display regulations. Furthermore, the proposed amendment is reasonable in the public interest as it provides clear, predictable standards for seasonal displays while addressing increased display activity within the traditional downtown district. This update aligns with the plan's goals of maintaining orderly, visually consistent development patterns across the community.

Thank you, Mr. Cole. So we have a motion for Mr. Cole to approve. Do I have a second for that motion? Second. I have a second from Greg. All in favor?

Aye.

I'll ask everybody in favor to raise their hands, if you would, on this, please, just so that we can record everything. Any opposed? So the motion would carry, but we have one opposed with Ms. Smith. OK. Our next item, I'll move to 11b. which is to consider rezoning request RZ2026-04, 1132 Mount Ola Highway for 2.347 acres located at 1132 Mount Ola Highway. The applicant is requesting Town of Mooresville residential, low intensity.

Good evening, board members. Presenting RZ2026-04 for 1132 Mount Ola Highway.

Good evening, Mr. Werner. Any conflicts of interest from the board? What I would disclose to the board is I am actually involved or president of the South Iredale Community Development Corporation, which resides next door. We certainly have no opposition as a board to this. It's a non-paying role. There's no financial consideration for any of that. But I think it should be disclosed just so that the board's aware. Is that a conflict for anyone on the board?

Do you want to make a quick motion to accept Steve stay on and have it not be conflict of interest as proposed?

Second.

So we have a motion from Mr. Katz, second from Mr. Cole, that I remain on the board during this hearing. All in favor? Any opposed? Then thank you very much for the vote of confidence. And Mr. Werner, please continue. Absolutely.

RZ202604, the request is to establish zoning from Iredell County Residential Agricultural, or RA, to Town of Mooresville Residential Low Intensity, RLI. Annexation is being sought concurrently with this request. This supports the town's strategic priority area of individual and community economic vitality by supporting the strategic plan goal to support development of housing, employment, and educational choices to support economic sustainability. A quick overview of the property. The owner and applicant are Ricky Brown. The property is located at 1132 Mount Willow Highway, an approximately 2.347 acre site, and would reside within voting ward three if annexed. Here are the current site conditions. Again, the site is currently zoned Iredell County Residential Agricultural and is currently vacant. The site is located within the WS2 Balance of the Back Creek Watershed Protection overlay, which limits coverage to a maximum of 12% impervious for low-density development and 30% impervious through high-density development with appropriate storm control measures if the site was to be developed. THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN IDENTIFIES THE FUTURE CHARACTER AND LAND USE MAP AS NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTIAL AND THE TIERED GROWTH MAP IDENTIFIES THE SITE AS TIER 2 PRIORITY AREA FOR UTILITY GROWTH. GIVE YOU A MOMENT TO REVIEW THE BY RIGHT USES FOR THE RESIDENTIAL LOW INTENSITY ZONING DISTRICT CURRENTLY IN OUR

Yeah, just to clarify that so in this type of rezoning there would be it's not a conditional rezoning so that the the By right stays the same that is correct.

That is the current request from the applicant, but it couldn't be changed It could be changed at the request of the applicant to a conditional zoning

But it's not a conditional zoning?

Correct.

OK, Patrick, thanks. That's what I wanted to know.

Absolutely. Again, here are the by-right density and intensities for both the current zoning of Iredell County Residential Agricultural and the proposed establishment of zoning to Town of Morrisville Residential Low Intensity. Staff has identified that the site is consistent with being a priority Utility connection within tier two of the growth map the site is compatible with the existing land uses creating a logical and orderly transition The site is consistent with the future character and land use map being designated as neighborhood residential and the site is within both the four minute and five mile response coverage area for fire station six Happy to answer any questions Any questions on this matter

There are no questions from the board for you. Is there an applicant to speak at this time?

The applicant is here to answer any questions, but no presentation at this time.

OK. With just a simple annexation, would anyone like to hear anything from the applicant? Or I'll leave that at the board's discretion.

I have a quick question. Mr. Katz. Yeah. What's the reason behind the request for rezoning? Or did I miss that?

Did you want to answer that, the request for rezoning? I can defer to the applicant on that one.

I'm here to speak on behalf of Rick Brown on the application process. You brought in light zoning from RA to RLI. I thought those were very competitive. Sorry, could you just tell your name? My name is John Fletcher Meadows. I'm from Mooreville. I'm here to speak for Rick Brown, Ricky Ray. And I like the RLI in comparison to the RA. It's very compatible when we brought in. The reason for Mr. Brown is that water and sewer would be a, necessity for this piece of property and it meets those criteria. I appreciate the board working with us and the SICDC in the process because it's got a sewer line going through one side of it that he didn't ask for so that pretty much put him into the water and sewer side of things instead of the septic and well side. So that put his property in a squeeze unfortunately but I think that The well and septic leaving the process with the water and sewer being brought in will help him get what he had planned on since his family's on it over 100 years.

What are his plans?

Two single families under the RLI.

Thank you.

Yep.

Thank you, Mr. Meadows. Any additional discussion or questions from the board? Do we have a motion at this time? Yes. Nice to meet you.

I make a motion to recommend to the town board approve RZ-2026-04 as the proposal is consistent with the town's one Mooresville comprehensive plan, specifically establishing zoning of 1132 Mount Ola Highway to residential low intensity appropriately extends the residential character of the general area and aligns with the future Character and land use map designation of neighborhood residential. Furthermore, the proposal is reasonable and in the public interest because it provides a logical and orderly transition to surrounding low density single family uses, aligns with tier two growth policies, and supports the continued residential development in the northern Mooresville corridor.

So we have a motion to approve from Mr. Red Arrow. Do I have a second to that motion? Second. Second from Mr. Poor. All in favor? Any opposed? So that motion carries in full, and we would recommend to the town board adoption as well. All right. Excuse me for a minute with my notes. Ready to go here. Absolutely. Our next item, item 11C, is to consider adoption of the Mooresville Tomorrow 2040 comprehensive plan as presented. I'm sure there's no conflicts of interest, but we'll ask anyway. I don't think there are any conflicts of interest on the board.

Well, we're all Mooresville residents. Well, we do qualify for that.

But otherwise, I think we're good to go. This evening we'll consider adoption of the Morrisville Tomorrow 2040 Comprehensive Plan as the town's guiding document for the future growth, development, conservation, infrastructure investment, and land use decision making. This does support the strategic priority area of safety and community well-being for all and our strategic plan goal to implement adopted quality of life plans. As a summary, the Morrisville Tomorrow 2040 comprehensive plan supports the town's long-term vision by establishing a shared vision for future growth and development, guiding land use infrastructure and capital investment decisions, promoting, coordinating predictable and sustainable growth, and providing policy direction for future rezonings and development decisions. Public draft is here. Our author is here tonight, Mr. Matt, to give a presentation. So I'll turn it over to him now and then allow you guys to ask questions at the end.

All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Coley. Matt, if you wouldn't mind just giving your name and address for the public record. It's good to see you again.

It's good to see you as well. Okay. Mr. Chairman, members of the planning board, my name is Matt Noonkester. I'm the owner and founding principal of a firm called City Explained Inc. We were the lead consultant for the team that was a partner of staff in the community to write this document. Right now, I'm currently located in Waxhaw, North Carolina.

Thank you very much.

Okay. So as we mentioned, I have a presentation for today, really just to hit some of the highlights of the document, speak a few things into the record. But really, it's if you have questions, I'm here for that as well. I know we're formal, but if you want to stop me at any time, please just go ahead and do it while the slide's up and it's hot on your mind. Just go ahead and ask the question. I'm comfortable with that. So for today, just to keep us organized and make sure we do hit all our topics, we have five items. I'm going to give you a little bit of background about how this process unfolded, what we achieved, and what we are bringing for you today. Go over the planning process, talk about the document that we have presented before you, what the next steps will be, and then obviously try to spend most of our time if you have any questions and I can give you answers on the process and the document. So in terms of the background, we are here to talk about the Mooresville Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan. I'm just highlighting here public hearing draft so that for you or members who are watching or anybody who wants to come to the planning desk, look in the bottom left hand corner for public hearing draft. You know you have the most current version of the document to look at and review. And then the document itself and sort of what is a comprehensive plan and why are we doing this? Really, we're trying to organize a lot of big ideas together for the town. This is that one opportunity the town has to really look at all the different facets and what it values as a community. Housing, environment, transportation, land use, the whole list goes on and on. And it allows you to kind of organize and look at that push-pull relationship between these different initiatives and things that go on. And really what we're trying to do is prioritize, at least generally speaking, the different values the town has and its intended outcomes and coordinated efforts for which it wants to take moving forward, whether that's town-led initiatives or investments, it's things you're asking development applicants to consider. or expectations you're setting for the community. This document tries to start to do that. Now, the way the document is created, again, we were the consultant. We brought our time, our experience, and our expertise. But we really tried to make sure this was a document full of fingerprints from the community. And we kind of took a three-pronged approach to this. One is community input, and I'll go into more depth in terms of what we did and how we did it. And then we did a lot of data and analysis and vetting and what if and measuring impacts. And then we bought some best practices. People would say, well, what are other cities or towns of your size? What are they doing right now? What did they do before us? What did we learn from that? And we're able to pull from that experience as well. the sweet spot where we had community support, the data tended to support that that's a viable outcome, and we've proven that it's worked somewhere else before. That's where the report was written, is where we tried to overlap those three items. So then I come back to, in the opening remarks, there were comments about kind of how government works within North Carolina. This document does have standing within the North Carolina General Statutes. It is recognized. It is not the most powerful document if you compare it to other states, but it is required in order to have zoning. So this document does need to move forward and be adopted at some point. As part of that, it tries to rally and organize the town in its decision-making and investments moving forward, whether that's in other plans, master plans or feasibility studies or in ordinances that may be supported later on. We're always trying to make sure that we're all rowing in the same direction. and that the compass is pointing in the right place with all these other follow-up studies that will be done using this document as the guide. And so you start to see from the graphic that we have moving from left to right, the comprehensive plan is the most broad of all the documents that you have as a town. However, it's kind of the tip of the spear, and so everything else should be pointing in the same direction as the comprehensive plan moving forward, whether that might be town budgets in the future in terms of the recommendations and projects that get brought forward or where the investment areas may be, the specific plans and then going into all of your regulations, your unified development ordinance, whether it's the zoning, the subdivision, those kind of things all should kind of take their cue from the seeds that were planted in the comprehensive plan. And so just to be very clear, though, sometimes community says, well, the comprehensive plan says it. Why doesn't it happen? Well, we recognize that there are really five kind of energies at play when we're looking at why change occurs. And you see those on the slide here. One is you have to have the market to support it. You may want things in your community that just right now the land is either too expensive or not expensive enough or those kind of things or anything like parking or stuff like that or mixes of uses, those kind of things. The market will help tell you when that stuff is ripe and ready to go. You have to have willing property owners. If the property owner wants to keep their land the way it is, there's no reason it will change. If we have a color on the map, it only happens if that property owner decides to move forward with that. Otherwise, it stays as it is now. The government, you do have a role in this. And that's where these documents and ordinances get created. You kind of put out your preferences and what your expectations are. You have to have the right developers to be able to do the work. You may be asking for certain types of housing choices or mixes of uses and things that maybe just the development community isn't there yet. And so they may need to adjust as well in order to implement this vision. And then the lending community, obviously, you have to eventually go to the banks and get the money to lend the project and they need to be on board as well and so i just paint this picture to set expectations because some people assume as soon as this plan is adopted everything should be in conformance with it immediately and there's so many different things at play in order to have change occur but one of the things we really heard loud and clear from the community as well as the whether it's the community at large the development community elected officials staff was trying to create a document that's predictable We want to try to make it so that everyone, again, sort of knows where the compass points and what we're trying to do. And so within our document, we tried to make it very simple and to the point and predictable as it went forward from the beginning to the end. So the process itself, we've been at it for quite a while now, but we did have a method to our madness. We kind of set the table, got ourselves organized, and then we did our homework and what I call sort of the adult book reports and things of that nature. continually getting community input and fingerprints all over the process. We also looked at multiple futures, five different futures for the community that were kind of dreamed up based on hearing opinions and frankly conflicting opinions about what Morrisville should be. We ran all of those side by side to look at their impacts. And then we wrote the document and the document actually concludes with an action plan in the last chapter. And then here we are today presenting the documents to you and then eventually the Board of Commissioners. In terms of our strategy, one of the things we were challenged with right away was trying to have a robust planning process and trying to get, again, a lot of input on this. And we kind of varied our different techniques, low tech to high tech, in person to virtual, those kind of things. And so we did interviews and had different conversations, the traditional workshops. With each workshop, we had a main event and then we also had another event. like an office hours drop-in in the other three wards. So we had an event in all wards at all times. And then we kept track of it. You see the community dashboard. And when you put some numbers to it, we've had hundreds of people who have been able to participate. If you look sort of in the top left, you see our in-person participation was higher in the beginning. But then if you look, we had about 7,600 online visits, and most of those were towards the end. So people kind of switched how they participated with us even during the planning process. Lots of comments that you see captured here that we were able to take into account with the document presented today. And then we did have a dashboard, again, trying to see what kind of participation we were getting and how that matched to a snapshot of the community. You see on the top left here in terms of how long have people lived in Mooresville. I was excited to see we had a lot of sort of the old timers who could tell us how things have changed. But you also see our next group were the people who've only been here between two and five years. So we got a lot of perspectives of the people who just moved here, asked them why they moved here, kind of those kind of things, what's the competitive advantage. As you go through some of these other ones, you see that we sometimes hit the target, but it might have been a little bit to the edge of the target. Things like household income, except for the outer band on the right where we were quite higher than the community snapshot, we did hit our buckets pretty well. Age, we tended to skew a little bit older, but I think if we would have taken the children out, you would have seen those blue bars adjust accordingly as well. But for me, what I was probably most excited about was if you look in the top right-hand corner, that's the participation by ward. And you see that all the wards were represented about to the proportion that they are in the community. And so we were really challenged to try to make sure we heard all the voices and we tracked it this way. And I'm very proud of that as we come forward.

That's good to see.

Yep. And then just kind of bringing it to life, you may recognize some of these events because you all had attended them. But again, everything was hands-on and interactive to the extent possible. How many people can have yarn in their planning process? We were really excited about getting some crafts involved. You see in the bottom left-hand side, we had those different futures based on things we heard and wanted to give feedback. So instead of just dismissing ideas early, we let five different visions transfer or travel side by side until we found what was really the preferred. And we were at big events and small events. You see like Mooresville Days and other things like that. We really tried to immerse ourselves in the community. Now, on the document, I'm not going to, you know, read 185 pages to you by any means, but I want to just highlight some of the things, either for you or members of the public or those watching, just so they know what's in there and maybe why. So, the first chapter that we have is sort of a preface statement. In there, we have, we actually added a section called Our Challenge because, frankly, there was a lot of passion when we showed up here about growth and development, what kind, how fast it was coming, what it meant for infrastructure and the like. We wanted to capture those concerns. So on the first page of the document, it sort of talks about the challenges of growth and the challenges of how to remain a community and remain a premier community within this region. It then goes into the shared vision for Mooresville. We just can't do vision statements anymore. Like eight words to capture it is just too complex, too unique. So we kind of went with what you see on the right-hand side, trying to get all of your values out there, again, to know where things are pointing. We then have the top 15 initiatives that are summarized from the plan. So this is the thing, if you don't want to read the entire document, what are the top 15 things that radiated most with the public? This happened after the draft plan was released and we did voting for prioritization. These were the 15 that rose to the top during that process. Obviously, subject to modifications, but this is the 15 that came out of the workshops for the draft plan. Once you make the 15, they're all They're all on the page. And it's just really to focus people. But all the recommendations are obviously important. On the introduction itself, just a couple of things to highlight. When we were going through our planning process, we recognized that Mooresville is really at an inflection point. Some of your community is doing greenfield development. Some of your community is going through infill pains. And some of your community, when we look out to the future, is going to need to redevelop. And the solutions for those initiatives are different. Think things like landscape requirements, parking requirements, all those kind of things. They're different based on that context. So we set up in Chapter 1 that we actually have three different ideas in our head as we go forward, and that'll mean that maybe we don't have one-size-fits-all recommendations, or even when you get into zoning later, you might need to have some nuances in there based on the condition that you're looking at. We did look at the same planning geography that we had from the one Mooresville plan and frankly the same geography since 2006 when I've been doing planning with the town. It's always been kind of this shape, but we had town limits as well as the extraterritorial jurisdiction for which you still have power and authority and then what we called our area of influence. And this is where we got a lot of residents from Iredell County involved, but they were in our planning area of influence and so we engage with them as well. and made all of our events open to everyone. In terms of the process, again, I won't go back into it. I've already presented on it. But just so you know, we do have a chapter on it so that that's captured and people understand how we got to what we did. The meat of the document is really chapter three. It's called the General Growth Framework. And it has a couple of different big ideas and important topics. One are the guiding principles. So these are those value statements, those preferences, those things, and the ways you would like to see things done within Mooresville moving forward. We have nine total. The first half talks about planned and orderly growth, so land use and timing of growth and development. Town character and authenticity, how do you make sure you remain unique and something special within the region and the state, frankly. Homes and neighborhoods, different choices and how to look at things like affordability, types of homes, designs of neighborhoods. Life outdoors would be just how to get out and be a community and gather and share space. Then on the second half of the principles, we have community motion, which is all about transportation. Just so you're aware, I'll mention here, we did take a timeout in our planning process because of the comprehensive transportation plan that the town was preparing at the time to make sure that those two documents were working together. So that's one of the reasons that we slowed down a little bit in our process. But these two documents should be working hand in glove in terms of transportation recommendations and the demand for transportation caused by our land use map and other things. Community facilities and services, again, responding to that urge and urgency about creating infrastructure to support all the growth and development that's been occurring. Economic vitality. Obviously, if we don't have jobs and other opportunities, it's a different outlook for your community. Being a more livable town. And then our financial securities and being prudent with town dollars and how you spend them. we had growth that we had to worry about so we have demand coming in we have interest within mooresville and so we enumerated how much that could be frankly a lot of this was already committed development so some of these numbers actually have baked into it things have already been approved and when people saw these numbers it was like well a lot of this is already kind of layered in the wedding cake analogy and then we had to decide what happens after that going into the future the One of the main parts of the chapter and the document itself is this three map series. And I'm going to explain it the best way I can is like the way I explain it to my children. So I'm going to go through these three maps and how you would use them and what they would mean. So the first map is called the intentional growth areas map. I call this red light, green light. So go, stop. And really, there's a lot of shades of yellow in between, which are proceed with caution. And so very quickly, whether you're the town, you're a development applicant, you're the community, you can look at that intentional growth areas map and see generally the areas of the community that you should expect to see growth and investment and those you might see to remain in its current state, things like rural preservation, those kind of things, or areas like conservation that you're really just not interested in doing things right now. And you'll see statements in there that tie extending infrastructure to those areas because you don't have limitless dollars, unlimited dollars. So instead, we need to kind of pinpoint where those investments would be made. So again, red light, green light. Should I move forward? Should I not move forward? You get to the second map, which is the conservation and development map. That's kind of looking down at the world if it's flat. And you're just looking and saying, wow, I wonder what kind of growth and development would go in different places. And those colors on the map kind of set a target and a mindset about what type of development you might expect in that area. And then the third map that you see is development change and intensity map. And that's thinking 3D. That's extruding off the page in terms of height, building, intensity, those kind of things. So when you go and you look at these three maps together, you say, OK, red light, green light. Should I expect growth here or not? What type should I expect, which is the second map? And how much of it should I expect as the third map? It's very intuitive to try to figure out whether or not growth will occur, what type, and how much. And so that's kind of how this goes in terms of its process. So just pulling a couple of things out here, you see, obviously, this is the intentional growth areas map. We have town limits as the primary growth area. And then we bounced it out a little bit, thinking of those numbers that we had to try to accommodate into the future. And you see the secondary growth area is a little larger in some places. We tried to keep it pretty tight to keep a small service area for your infrastructure, footprints, and investments. Within the document, you'll see descriptions of each of those colors. And like I mentioned, you know, I say red light, green light, but again, those shades of yellow that proceed with caution under what terms and context is really important on this map. And then you get into the conservation development map. Again here, what type of development would you expect? You see a little more granularity at this point because we want to be a little more predictable on what might be supportable within these areas. And then you also see the letters on the map are different concentrations of development that are described as activity centers within the area.

It appears on the conservation development map that generally all of the county property light light beige number color. Yeah, and it's noted for single single lot residential or single family or townhouse communities. Most of the growth is in or in in infill the way it's addressed, and then there's the one mile around, as I understand it right one mile around the It just was interesting that all of this was kind of shaded that way. So it wasn't really a lot of attention that doesn't look like to that county property.

Well, a couple of things. We did go through, again, because we had five different futures. So we did look at different ideas for it. Where we ended up, especially on the western side where you see the light yellow, a lot of that is just access. I mean, you think about it, sometimes those are just long cul-de-sacs. So you think about traffic. We also think about water sewer extensions and some of those sorts of things. And so really kind of more of the same on the fingers on the peninsula is where we settled. On the right-hand side, there was so much debate kind of about the rule mindset and setting and preferences at that time when we went through our planning process. And frankly, to extend the infrastructure, we found enough land sort of more compactly. in a more compact nature to meet the demands versus making those big investments marching out and then feeling the force to fill in the gap in between. So this is really more about, if I want to say it, I'd say this is more about prudent growth. Now, if we are here 100 years from now, the areas in green may have pressure to become a different color. But at this point in time, when we looked at the infrastructure marching out and those kind of things, we found enough land internal that we kind of focused on that.

The reason I was thinking about it is when you look at it and you look at this document once it's approved, then it can be a large factor in a decision this board would make on recommending or not recommending. Like a rezoning. Yes, exactly the point I'm making. Okay, I think that's good. I'm very impressed by the whole document. Go ahead. Thank you for stopping.

Of course, of course. So for each of those colors that we have on the map, we've created sort of what I call families. So if you want to like think of a family as rural living, all right, when you're going to live rural within Mooresville, we have a couple different ways you can do that. You can live on a farm. You can be like a commercial node, like a little node of commercial activity in a rural setting, a conservation neighborhood where you really try to preserve a lot of the land in its current natural state. a homestead, those kind of things. And we have families for residential. We have families for business, industrial, and mixed use. So you start there, and then we get a little more granular in terms of what's expected. And then one of the things we did, again, under this umbrella of predictability, was I could have written 30 more pages of text for you, and it would have just been more stuff to sift through and potentially have conflicts or be used in different ways. So we went to this matrix and matrices approach that we have here. And so we just tried to be very clear and upfront for each of the different place types that you see on the left as rows. What are we really after in terms of different targets? So this target here being different residential building types. And then we have definitions of all of those types that go behind it. Now again, I just want to be very clear for you. You'll notice I don't have densities and things in here per se. because we don't want to get tripped up by your zoning ordinance later. And so these targets, when you look at this type of housing, you know the range of density that this housing usually comes in at. But when you get to zoning and you're looking at setbacks and parking requirements and stormwater needs and all of that, that density could move one unit here, one unit there, whatever. And we don't want to create a conflict with your comprehensive plan. So this sets the targets for what types of housing would come in, but we would defer to zoning to really hit those density numbers and things like that. It just eliminates the potential for conflict. And then our last map here, this development change in intensity map. Again, this is where we're extruding off of the page in terms of how much intensity and things might be there. We have different levels that are described within the document and set expectations for it. And then you see we have a table here that kind of sets those height, bulk, and density expectations. So this might come back into like a rezoning request or something of that nature. You start to at least get some boundaries in order to have those conversations about what might be expected there. And then we also know that there needs to be a hand-in-glove relationship between this and your UDO. So we do have in here a matrix that talks about the different zoning categories that you have now. And we try to make a connection to our place types so that there's not misunderstanding or misinterpretation. when you move forward in that regard then we did do focus area concepts this is sort of the end of the chapter and i call these sort of the proof of concept proof of concept and this is by no means i want to be very clear by no means like a pre-baked approval for any piece of land within the town we are testing ideas like we support mixed use we support uh walkable environments and then people just kind of go in different directions what is that really That's what these proof of concepts are, is to look at different situations and how the words of our document might apply. Once you do that, anywhere that you see these focus areas drawn, anywhere with that color on the map, could be a suitable place for that to occur. But again, this just tests some of those ideas and makes sure we're certain in terms of what we're looking for. And then again, for each of the proof of concepts, it has a drawing, but it also has just sort of some recommendations that you might be able to use in the future. Again, rezoning or something of that nature. Then we also then, if that chapter three creates the demand for services, chapter four is basically the infrastructure chapter of how to solve some of those. Now we did take a tact here. If you look at chapter three, it's big. You look at chapter four, it's pretty lean. One of the reasons we did that was we don't want to double speak all the other plans and documents you have. So really what this does is it points to the comprehensive transportation plan. It points to the parks and recreation plan. It points to the water and sewer master plans. and says those have the same standing as if they were in our document. And so they have the same standing under Chapter 160D as if they were in here. But we don't regurgitate them and potentially have errors in misrepresenting them. Go find that document. It should meet the demand of this comprehensive plan. As we start to move into recommendations that are housed within the document, we first start with some town-wide concepts. And these are just little almost case studies or white papers about just good planning and good design and things you want to see consistent throughout your community, not just on one site and then ignored on another. And you see on the right-hand side things like what we call the public realm, which is just planner speak for the space between buildings, the public spaces that we try to connect and create streets that have logic to them consistency to them. How do you mix different land uses and development intensities together? Looking at site compatibility and transitions. So if you have existing development here and you have a piece of vacant land, how do you make sure they talk to each other and just don't dominate each other one or the other? Other things like continuous open space, connected open space, the transportation land use connection. And then just a little bit of information about the long-term financial stability. You know, good architecture, great places tend to command greater value, greater wealth, which generates more tax production for you, which means you provide more services. So those kind of lessons are in this chapter. And then finally, we have the very specific town policies and recommendations. Right now we have 65 of them. You see the way they're numbered is by the planning principles that I had presented early in chapter three. Again, 65 total across the nine principles. And then it goes into an action plan. And for each one of those recommendations, we bring it into an action plan and you see here the policy. So it's just brought forward the action that it takes in order to implement that policy. there is a work product to be created it's there we have a time frame whether it's short term midterm or long term and you see the years that go with it who should lead that initiative it's not all the planning department we've assigned it to different departments within the town an estimated cost just in terms of level of investment is this something you can do within your discretionary funds do you have to budget it you have to go find a funding partner for it just setting those expectations if you go through this and and Not to put too much burden on staff, obviously, but there's 56 things that really you could start right away. And if, and I say if, the staff has time, there's 35 of them we think that they have the time, expertise, and knowledge to be able to start on their own without any consultant or any other need except having a great staff. Not to overwhelm you. But there's a lot of work that could be done, and some of that could be absorbed by staff. Other things of that you would want to hire out other resources and the like. But we break it up that way so you kind of know what you're getting into. All right, so that's the document at a glance. So then in terms of next steps, we're here today meeting with you all in terms of planning board. We do have on my calendar at least two other meetings, one September 16th with the Board of Commissioners as a work session, and then September 21st as a hearing. And those are our target dates, obviously subject to decisions that are made along the way. So with that, I just want to entertain any other comments or questions that you might have, and I'll stay here as long as you want.

Well, Matt, thank you very much. So questions from the board? I'm not sure how many folks may have been involved in this process, but I was impressed with the process. Thank you. from the very first meeting that I had over here, you know, across town and the participating group of people coming in, your options in terms of making it so that the general public can come in and look at the types of development and start to understand that, understand where they would like to see it, have discussions around why it does or does not fit there, and participate in the event. So it's really good to see that the numbers were proportionate. around all the areas that folks participated on. Yes, we're excited to. Any other thoughts, comments?

Yeah, just I did go through the whole thing, and I think it's aggressive in a very positive way. There's an awful lot of work involved to go forward. You ended with it. I thought that... Obviously, the public comment was great. You'd like to see bigger numbers, but they were consistent across the way. But they were disappointingly small when we have the number of people that like to not like what's going on, if I can say it that way. I think there's an awful lot of work in here to make this work. And the way you outlined it and the examples you gave with the crosstown, the rural, I thought they were excellent to help visualize what needed to be done. I think this is going to bite off a big bunch, but it's better to have a plan that's aggressive and out there and pointing at something that we can be proud of. than something that's going to be a lot more restrictive. So I appreciate all the work, and I'm very impressed by what you ended up with.

Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Mr. Porter.

As the only ETJ member, I don't live in Mooresville. I live in the county, but I appreciated the outreach. I did participate in your online version, so I thought you did a good job not just corralling the town, but you exceeded the limits in terms of my participation. So thank you.

Awesome. Thank you.

I'll throw a question at you more for the general public, people that are here and maybe online. What would be the difference between the land use plan and the UDO?

Sure. So the land use plan, and I'm going to use the term comprehensive plan just because that's how it's referred to in general statute. It is a policy document. It sets the direction for which the town wants to go. It's adopted, so it's out there. It's letting people know kind of where to go. When you get into UDO, that's law, right? So that is what I usually say is coulds and shoulds in the comprehensive plans become shalls and wills in the UDO or zoning. It becomes law at that point. Did I do OK?

Fantastic. Thank you. My view is that the UDO is going to have to be changed. If this plan was accepted in any type of close to its entirety, 80%, 70%, there's a lot of things that have to be specifically changed. It seems to me we would see a lot more detail coming to us regarding development project there'd be a lot more town participation. In in in what's there a lot more so yeah I mean it's just yeah statutes there, but it that statute won't support this plan right.

yeah I would say, probably the biggest the biggest thing to worry about now is this mindset of not having one size fits all. And I'll go back because one of the work sessions, we had a story about somebody who wanted to make an improvement downtown. But by the time they did the landscaping and parking requirements, it just didn't make sense. But those requirements were really suburban requirements. And so that's probably the biggest change that might occur is having to nuance some of those regulations now by context.

I have a question. So what happens when the UDO and the plan are at odds?

So at this point in time right now, I go back to my explanation before. The UDO is law, and the comprehensive plan is policy and direction. The way the North Carolina general statutes are written right now, the comprehensive plan is required. You have to have one to have zoning. If you choose not to follow it, it's not subject to judicial review. Some other states we work in, the community can take you to court saying you're not following your plan. That doesn't occur here. So right now, the UDO still wins. and it would be up to you to start to amend your UDO to be in conformance with the plan.

Which we've had a few instances where we've made changes to the UDO as we've gone along and gone forward. All of this, there's a lot of fluidity when you're looking at the volume of growth we've had over, let's just say, the past 10 years in the census. It's been It's been double digit growth, so it's been huge to deal with, I think, from the town with infrastructure, from DOT with traffic and roadway systems. So I like what this brought in. When I was at Selma Burke and they had, when you had the very first meeting, It allowed the folks to come in from the community and then start to understand what you could do to mitigate traffic. What can a planned community do to make more accessibility within your scope of just simply walking to what I need, to the grocer or drugstore or whatever it may be, restaurants, etc. And so it was neat to see people be able to go through that process, understand it, you know, and be able to contribute to it. I think you did a great job with that and the options you provided and what you're looking at in terms of, you know, corridors may have to be modified over the years. We've certainly seen that on 150 over time as long as we've been here. few times in those cycles so as as growth occurs there's still i think just a bit of fluidity that comes with that your process i think tended to help set the expectation of that as you went through it which i think was good for the community excellent thank you one more comment i guess what i see is being i don't see how this works will work i hope it will work but the way development is in a

As a property rights state, our development is driven by a landowner and a developer come together. And yes, the UDO is a format, but it's more like real guidelines for setbacks and this and all of that stuff. But this goes way beyond that. Way beyond that. And I think the hard part's going to be how to mold that to make this successful as a property rights state. And the way things have gone up till now, there would be a sale or a marketing of here's what we need, which probably happens on the industrial side, but on the residential and the other things that are in this plan in terms of human spaces and so forth. It seems like that's an action item that the town has to take on if you're looking to have this actually happen, which ties right in with the financial requirements as to where the money comes from and who invests. I just see it as cool, but that could be because the way we're organized, make this a little slower than it might happen in another place where a town would have more rights to be able to do things differently.

I think what you're saying is that you're melding the community's vision to the comprehensive plan. In other words, property owners have to buy into the vision because they get to decide what they're going to do with their property. Is that kind of what you're saying?

What I'm saying is it seems to me that one of the action items is you have to sell this. This is what you want. And you want people that are coming in and going to want to do this in more of its entirety. Then as opposed to one-on-one, I'm ready to sell my property, and these people want to buy it, and this is what they can make the most money on if I sell it to them. And then we have to adjudicate that process given all of the things that the town doesn't control, specifically, of course, transportation.

Good example for you might be, OK, When I first moved to the Carolinas, I was transferred from Florida as part of an engineering planning firm. I got transferred up. And I paid a $15,000 lot premium to be on a green one. So that's called value capture now. So if part of this is like, the worst thing that could happen to this plan is it goes to the million dollar shelf where all good plans go to die because nobody implements it. So it does have to continue to be implemented and sold and propped up. If from an education standpoint, you can show that some of these things actually add value to what you can sell and what you can do, and connecting them makes even more value, everybody can win. But if it ends up just being more of a stick than a carrot kind of approach, it's still going to be adversarial. This is still the most powerful document is at the time of rezoning and conditional rezoning because they're volunteering to do certain things as part of the rezoning. So that's when the plan is probably its most powerful.

Any additional questions from the board? Any discussion? And Matt, I think you've done a good job. Thanks very much for your presentation tonight. And again, I'll look forward to the next meeting we have here at Town Hall to review that next step.

Awesome. Thank you all so much.

Thank you. Open and I believe closed, Mr. Coley, the public comment session. I didn't see anyone signed up to comment on this. Correct. I'm reviewing the motion statements. It looks like we have three options is what I see on that in terms of the board, whether to recommend the adoption of the Mooresville Tomorrow 2040 comprehensive plan as presented. Two, recommend the adoption of the Mooresville Tomorrow 2040 comprehensive plan with modifications. Or three, recommend declining the option of the Mooresville Tomorrow 2040 comprehensive plan. So I'll ask the board again if there's, did you have, before I move to that, did you have any comments? Then I'll ask the board if there's any further discussion or if there's a motion to one of those three.

I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion to recommend the adoption of the Mooresville Tomorrow 2040 comprehensive plan as presented. This gives the town board the opportunity to discuss further.

Thank you. So we have a motion to approve from Mr. Katz. Do I have a second? I have a second from Ms. Smith. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So we would recommend in full to the town board to adopt that as well. And thank you very much. Thanks for all your hard work on this. That takes us to item 11D, which is to consider rezoning request RZ2026-03, 124 and 128 Market Road for .774 acres located at 124 and 128 Market Road. The applicant is requesting Town of Mooresville Traditional Neighborhood.

Mr. Werner. Good evening again. Presenting RZ2026-03 for 124 and 128 Market Road.

I'll ask the board for any conflicts of interest in the matter. Dean Nunn? Pardon? I just want to put this out there.

Looking through the proposal, I know Mr. Sullivan. If Mr. Sullivan is OK with me sitting on, that's fine. Other than us knowing each other and if you still live, in the community, then we either still live or we used to live in the same community. Other than that, that's the extent of it.

If you don't have a financial conflict in the matter or anything, I think for those of us who have been here 40, 50 plus years, we probably know half the room half the time when we look across the audience. So I think that's no harm, no foul. But thanks for making mention of that. It's always best. But Mr. Warner, I think we're good to go.

Perfect. So this request is to rezone 0.774 acres from residential limited service, RLS, to traditional neighborhood, TN. Annexation is being sought concurrently. This supports the town's strategic priority area of individual and community economic vitality by supporting the strategic plan goal to support development of housing, employment, and educational choices to support economic sustainability. Quick overview of the property. The owner is Village Real Estate Investments, LLC. The applicant is Kelly Ireland. The property is located at 124 and 128 Market Road, an approximately 0.774 acre site, and would reside within voting ward one if annexed. Again, the site is zoned RLS within Mooresville's ETJ. Currently has two single family residential dwellings on the property established in the 1940s. Mooresville's UDO permits only one dwelling per lot. which makes the site a legal nonconformity. Both dwellings share a private well, and each is served by its own septic system at this time. Here is a visual exhibit of the property in question with the two single family dwellings on the site. The proposed rezoning to traditional neighborhood would permit the parcel to be subdivided into two lots, establishing one dwelling on each lot. Each new lot would meet the TN zoning requirements set by the UDO for lot size and setbacks. With rezoning and annexation, the applicant intends to connect both of these dwellings to town public and water, creating two independently served residential lots. The comprehensive plan notes in the future character and land use map, the site is neighborhood residential, and the tiered growth map identifies the site within tier one, designated as a priority utility growth area. Here are the by-right uses for traditional neighborhood, as this is a straight rezoning and no conditions may be added. And here are those densities and intensities for both the current zoning of residential limited service and the proposed zoning of traditional neighborhood. Staff has identified that the site is consistent with being a priority utility connection within Tier 1 of the growth map. The site is partially compatible with the existing land uses, creating a logical transition and more appropriate zoning for existing development. However, it introduces higher residential density and a broader range of by-right uses the surrounding residential districts in the area the site is consistent with the future character and land use map being designated as neighborhood residential and the site is within both the four minute and five mile response coverage area for fire station five happy to answer any questions and the applicant is here with a short presentation thank you mr warner questions for staff and board is there another option to get to the same result

without allowing all these uses to go forward?

At this time, this would be the most straightforward approach to allow for both annexation and subdivision at the applicant's request.

Yeah, I guess I went through these. I didn't really see anything that was offensive in the list. OK, thanks, Patrick.

Absolutely. This might ultimately be a question more for the applicant. It's RLI directly behind the property. Why TN versus RLI? And would RLI meet the needs of the applicant?

So from a UDO standpoint, it's the setbacks.

Good question. Good to know that. So thanks. Absolutely. So at this time, if there are no further questions then for staff, then would the applicant like to come forward? And again, if you just state your name and address for the public record, please.

Michael Sullivan, 183 Crystal Circle, Mooresville.

Thanks very much.

Okay. Honestly, there's not much more, but it's really just the two houses on one lot. It's already nonconforming, and she's ready to sell it. And by splitting it, it makes it easier to sell. One of the tenants actually wants to buy the property or buy his property. And the only physical visible change will be adding a small driveway to the left side. Of the one house at 124. And that's really the whole reason for the application. So nothing else will change and then there'll be two. More affordable houses for the town of Morrisville for residents to buy so.

Any questions from the board for the applicant?

I think that's, I appreciate you adding that.

I think that's maybe what the board was looking for, because as Mr. Cole looked at, you know, there are the straight up rezoning, then all the uses available for that rezoning are part of it. And I understand this may be more about how to move quickly through the process than it is otherwise through a conditional.

And then the annexation is purely, so they have one shared well right now? They both have a separate septic system, but they have one shared well. So with the annexation, she can connect the water for the other property.

OK. Well, I'd just say that the density change, too, was another one. It was as big an issue to me as the bigger issue, actually, than the fact that the uses look fine. But the fact that the density could automatically get a lot down the road by right. and that's why i was asking is there another way to do this obviously it's a really we should look at doing it for the residents for the reasons mike stated but i hate to see that density be a by right situation going forward on those on those two lots that could then end up being a apartment building or something by right and we never intended for that to happen so you're telling me from the planning department there's no way around that

Correct. Yeah, this is the most straightforward approach to meet the setbacks and not increase the nonconformity of the property.

I had the same concern. The dense ass would draw my question on why not ROI because it's lower density. But if it doesn't meet the needs of the setbacks, then I'm understanding why it needs to be TN.

I get it. It just ought to be a way to solve this without putting us in a by-right situation that we're not going to like 10 years from now. That's all.

Just a question. So when you said the most straightforward way of proceeding right now, to me that suggests that there is maybe another way.

Mr. Cole, did you have something to add?

Sorry, thank you. This is the straight rezoning route. You can reject that and ask them to come back conditionally. That would be up to them. And that way you could put conditions on that future growth and development if you wanted to. You could continue this. We could talk to them. You have several options available to you. However, for a straight rezoning, This is the district that fits with the requirements for those existing buildings to make those setbacks work.

Thank you, James. That's real helpful. I'll let you guys know that I would not vote for approving this. I would look for a contingent, for a continuance.

Could I ask Mr. Sullivan a question? Yes, sir. Would you have any problem in, you hear her other concerns. I do. Do you think that she would have any problem? No, no, not at all.

I think she was just following. Yeah. Recommendation.

Yeah. Understood. But you see where that. Oh, I.

Lead us down. I understand completely where you're coming. I never even crossed my mind of the way that it's written. So, but.

Would we be able to, if we did push this, would we be able to get the applicant back on next month to try to keep this expedient for them as well?

We would need to do a neighborhood meeting because it would be a conditional rezoning. So we would probably be closer to that 60-day mark. So not necessarily August, but September, certainly.

Would that work in your time frame? I know that's pushing you out a couple of months.

Is that the end of September? Yes. That's fine.

Then if it's OK with you, I'll I'll ask the board for a motion of continuance on this.

I was going to say I think a withdrawal would be more appropriate if you're wanting to go that route because otherwise we're making a recommendation to the board and it continues on. So if you would plan to go the conditional route instead, which is an applicant choice, then I would suggest withdrawal or I would look to planning to say if that's appropriate.

Or a continuance, Carrie? We did that before. Didn't we do a continuance for the boat?

Well, this would be a completely new application because straight rezoning versus a conditional rezoning are two different types of applications with two different requirements. Like you said, there's neighborhood meetings. There's notices that have to go out.

Thank you. Yes. I just have a question for my own edification. So a concern, obviously, is about density. But if it's a 0.77 acre and you're splitting it into two lots, how much can you actually put on two lots? Because it said eight units per acre, so does that mean?

Yes. It basically goes to a 5,000 square foot lot, which means both of those could support at least one additional housing unit. So that would be the condition that you would want to add is what I'm hearing is that you would want each of these lots to be limited to the existing single family home or replacing a single family home and not having two units on each lot.

I mean, the only thing I'll add is it's 0.7 acres getting split into two lots. Potentially, like we just said, there's an opportunity for one additional unit per lot, but it's not that big of a lot. So, I mean, if this was 10 acres, I would say absolutely, right? We need to have a resubmittal with conditional zoning. But because it's so small, I think, yes, it's probably the best to have it resubmitted, but the reality is the chances of anything really happening with this becoming more is so small because the size of the lot doesn't really permit it anyway.

Can't you go up three stories?

That's fair.

So you could go up three stories and cut it up, you know, have 600 square feet per unit. That's part of it. You've got density. Not high density multifamily, but, you know, could you get?

That's part of it.

Right. City Council Chambers, I do want to note that multifamily is not a by right use for traditional neighborhood so that would require conditional rezoning for any more than a duplex on each lot okay.

City Council Chambers, This is good we're we're sussing it out right.

City Council Chambers, So you the planning department doesn't see a lot of risk here is what is what i'm is why you went forward this way is that what i'm. based on the size of the lot. Like you said, Jim, there could be four houses instead of two.

We did talk with the applicant. Ultimately, it was the applicant's decision on which way to go forward. We did give them both options on conditional and straight rezoning. They chose the straight rezoning route.

I still feel for the neighborhood itself, in fairness to where everybody else is at over there, we'd be better off to have the condition that it's going to be two lots with two single-family houses going forward. without needing, unless they would have, if it was that way, conditionally done, then if something has to, somebody wants to do something different in that area sometime down the road, they come back again and get approval, and we look at how it fits with everything else there at that time.

Any other discussion from the board? Faults?

Yeah, the applicant did have something to say.

It might be a question for Jim. Sure. It could only be a duplex?

No, no, no. Duplex is allowed by right in that district. So if you were going to go back with something higher density, that would be something that would be available through this rezoning currently. What Patrick was saying is that you could not do a multi-family development. You could do duplexes on there. So if they wanted to knock down one of these houses, put a duplex there, that would be something that would be available with the straight rezoning.

If it met the dimension of standards and requirements,

OK. It would be, as it's applied.

Yes.

So question to the planning board. Again, not anywhere in any plan to this. The plan is to split it and sell them to the residents. But in proposing more housing, affordable housing in the town, would a duplex not be desired by the town for more affordable housing?

Just for me personally, I'm fine with your proposal as is. It's just for me. I don't know about anybody else.

Well.

The reason that I brought this up in the first place, when I hear this is the most straightforward way, that to me just throws up bells and whistles. So there's some other way to go. Let's hear about that. And that's why I brought it up.

So to bend your ears, too, because I'm just curious as a resident of 25 years, too, is does the town support ADUs being added to lots right now?

Depends on the zoning district. The zoning district.

But does the town planning board support that for more affordable housing for people?

That would not be an appropriate question at this point because we have a case before us.

OK.

Any additional discussion? Because I think we have Mr. Boer who would like to go ahead and make a motion.

So for clarity from staff, lots are split up 10 years down the road. As everything stands now, the only thing you could get is either a single family or duplex, two families. That's the most density you could get.

From a residential standpoint, yes, that would be the highest density allowed by right.

Thank you.

Well, on a discussion point, I think I would be comfortable with that. Mr. Porter, your choice.

I recommend option one, approve the request. I make a motion to recommend the town board approve RZ202603. as a proposal is consistent with the Town of Mooresville's one comprehensive plan. Specifically, rezoning 124 and 128 Market Road to a traditional neighborhood is consistent with the future characteristics of the land development use plan designated of the designation of the neighborhood residential and provides a zoning district that appropriately accommodates the existing residential development on the property. Furthermore, the proposal is reasonable and in the public interest because it supports a logical and orderly development pattern by allowing the existing dwellings to be established on separate conforming lots, aligns with the tier one growth policies that facilitates connection to the public water and sewer.

Thank you, Mr. Poore. And Mr. Cole, my thoughts are, again, I think your point is good. And I think it's exactly valid. But I don't think that the property supports Yeah, so I feel pretty comfortable around that motion, the direction you're going. So we have a motion from Mr. Poore to approve. Do I have a second to that motion?

I'll second.

Mr. Peretz, all in favor? Opposed? So we ended up having full support. We'll recommend to the town board for approval. Well, they're good, good points. I don't disagree. We'll move now to item 11E, which is to consider conditional rezoning request CZ2026-03. That's at Fern Hill for 73.25 acres. Located at unaddressed Fern Hill Road, pins 4649239843, And 464523502, the applicant is requesting Town of Mooresville Conditional Residential General, C-RG.

Good evening, Chair, Board. We're presenting CZ202603, Fern Hill Road.

Good evening, Ms. Lattin. And are there any conflicts of interest from the Board? Seeing none, please proceed.

Yes, sir. This is a request to rezone from Iredell County residential agricultural to the town of Mooresville conditional residential general CRG. This request will allow the development of up to 140 single family detached dwellings. This supports the strategic priority area of individual and community economic vitality by supporting the strategic plan goal of supporting development of housing, employment and educational choices to support economic sustainability. The owner is Jeffrey W. Monti, Recoverable Trust. The applicant is Mr. Tim Derelak with D.R. Horton. The location is unaddressed Fern Hill Road. The size is 73.25 acres. And the voting Ward 4 is Ward 4 if annexed. This is a current site photo. I wanted to note that the site currently has 71 acres of tree canopy and is vacant. The site is currently zoned Iredell County residential agricultural and lies within the WSIV critical area and IV protected watershed, restricting impervious coverage to 50% and 70% restrictively. It'll have up to 140 single family detached dwellings for a dwelling unit per acre of 1.91, and it'll come out to 17.92 acres of active open space. The Future Character Land Use Map designates this area as Peninsula Residential, and this property is identified as a Tier 4, which is a low priority utility provision. This is their concept plan. It was approved on June 6, 2026. The density by right in RA versus by right in RG. I did want to make a note in the packets. They had committed to a condition of a lot width of a minimum of 50 feet, but then noted closer to the deadline that most of the cul-de-sac lots that that would be hard to achieve. So I'll let the applicant speak to what that final number may be, but I did want to note that it would be the by right in RG is 25 feet. But you guys can talk to the applicant about that, about what works best with their plan. They did cross off every use except for single family detached dwelling. With every annexation that comes in, we do send out a technical review committee to the experts in their fields to give comments on whether or not the town could service their property. For police, they noted that the parcel lies outside their current patrol and crash response zones as the Atwater Landing subdivision currently defines that boundary. Expanding the city limits northward to include Fernhill would require the police department to extend its patrol area. Access for responders would be limited primarily to the Rankin Hill Road to Fernhill Road or Preston Road to Rankin Hill Road, both of which require travel through that Atwater subdivision. These access routes may result in minor increases to officer drive times and could generate comments from the at-water landing residents. Fernhill Road is now pushing outside of the normal crash patrol response area, as they only have one neighborhood off of Cornelius Road and Judas Road now. For water, the property is within a tier four of the town's tiered growth map, which is a low priority town utility provision. This property would be the most remote northern point of the town's utility system. Additionally, this project requires a sewer pump station, which would add to the town's burden of maintenance. The effluent sewer would then be pumped to the Atwater landing pump station, which was not designed as a regional pump station. The developer would then be required to conduct an engineering analysis to determine the utility system capacity improvements required to serve the project including water system hydraulic model, sewer pump station force, force main hydraulic model, and gravity system flow monitoring with potential upgrades to the existing at-water landing pump station. Any improvements to the utility system recommended by the engineering analysis would be required to be designed and constructed by the developer, with all costs being the developer's sole responsibility. Code noted that they had no issues with the request. Fire noted that the proposed development would fall outside of the four-minute response time from Station 4 and also falls within the five-mile boundary. Fire utilizes GIS as well as actual drive times from Station 4 as well as Station 2 to gather these findings. The area remained outside that four-minute response but fell within the five-mile boundary from both stations. The unknown is the roadway infrastructure and any potential increase to the travel distance to the further property to the development via driving distance. It appears to still be within the five mile boundary. To assess this, fire utilized an ending point on Fern Hill Road and Angel Drive. We also marked the time to entrance on the northwest side of Aunt Lauder Landing and Judas Road. And then they gave these statistics to look over. Public Works noted that the developer would be required to conduct the engineering analysis and that costs for all improvements would be part of their responsibility. And then the improvements would be dedicated and transferred to the town upon town's acceptance. They had some minimal traffic impact analysis notifications to go over. They'd be constructing a southbound left-hand lane on Perth Road with it have about 250 feet of storage. They'd be modifying the traffic signal to accommodate that above improvement. At Cornelius and Judas, they'd be restriping that gore area there to provide an additional 200 feet of storage for the southbound left turn lane. At Fernhill Road and site access A, for the east approach, they'd have one ingress and one ingress lane. They'd be providing an internal protected stem of 100 feet measured from the right-of-way, and they'd be providing a stop control for the east approach. At Fernhill and Site Access B, which is the more northern of the two access points there, they will be constructing the site access with one ingress and ingress lane. They'd be providing internal protected stem of 100 feet measured from the right-of-way. They'd be providing a stop control for the eastbound approach, and they'd be constructing a southbound right turn lane on Fernhill Road with about 100 feet of storage with an appropriate deceleration and taper. They held their neighborhood meeting on February 17, 2026. It was held in person down the street at the Charles Mack Citizen Center. 20 community members attended, and feedback was mostly against the development, as residents of Fernhill Drive were concerned about density that differed from their particular neighborhood. Residents from the Atwater neighborhood were in attendance to speak against the development about traffic, emergency services, and trucks going through their neighborhood. For map amendment standards, the site is compatible with existing land uses, creating a logical transition However, it does not promote an orderly development pattern. The site is within the five mile response coverage area. However, this area is outside the preferred four minute response for stations two and four. And the average response time for fire is over eight minutes. The site is not consistent with being a priority utility connections within tier four of our growth map. And it's also inconsistent with our future character land use map being designated as peninsula residential. I did want to go over kind of what Tier 4 meant in the utility provisions because we just don't speak to it enough. We just haven't had a recent request. So Tier 4 is a low priority town utility provision. Areas in the east and west of the planning area are limited by state regulations to protect their potable sources of water within the Lake Norman and the Don Tihal Reservoir. These regulations limit impervious surface but do have some flexibility for additional density in rural lands that provide a natural buffer for the more intensive development occurring in Roanoke and Barris around us. It's not expected that this additional town utility would be provided. And that's from our current comprehensive plan. And then I also wanted to speak to Peninsula Residential, because we don't see this one often either. But Peninsula Residential is a primarily residential character area intended to continue the single family residential character of lakefront and peninsula neighborhoods. These areas have development limitations imposed by water supply, watershed protection standards, and from a practical standpoint, have limits to street connectivity based on the shape of the peninsula. Streets are intended to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists. Neighborhood-scale commercial use of such small offices, services, or stores may be appropriate at corners of major streets, and the majority of developed land within this is within the county's planning and zoning jurisdiction. And then notes that this plan assumes that these areas will be managed by Iredell County. These are some of the characteristics that are in the comprehensive plan that talks about Peninsula Residential. The plan calls for one to three stories with 40-foot front setbacks, current Olivia Street patterns that accommodate pedestrians and bicycles for walking. And it notes that the Fernhill plan does meet the building height, front setback, and street patterns. They have not offered extra accommodation for separate pedestrian, bicycle facilities, crosswalk, and the like. And the plan does not currently show parking to the side of the rear. or have a density of two units per acre. Their proposed conditions are rather extensive. I will slowly read them out, but if it's taking too long, you can tell me to just kind of speed through. Their proposed uses are single-family detached dwellings, along with accessory uses that are allowed in RGE. The maximum unit of development is 1.91 dwelling units per acre, which will allow up to 140 single-family homes. They noted that their max building height would be two stories. Parking would be as required by the ordinance. The site location is approximately 73 acres located off Fern Hill Road. The development of the site will conform to the approved concept plan, including any post-approval minor modifications. All streets, greenways, and paths will be subject to the standards and criteria. Offsite transportation improvement phasing, if there's any use or reuse that required a further TIA, all those mitigations shall be completed phasing of the roadway improvement shall occur as set forth in the mma if a fee in lieu has been paid by the petitioner or proposed development the improvement will be deemed to be completed for the purposes of issuance access access to the site will be from fernhill road as generally depicted modifications to the alignment of the vehicular circulation and driveways may be made by the petitioner with approval from the town The principal buildings and accessory structures constructed on the site, including all areas of development, shall adhere to the architectural requirements and standards of the ordinance. Vinyl may not be used. The site will comply with section 53 and 54 and 56 of the UDO. Street trees will be installed along new interior public streets with the planting strip within the right of way. Final open space and tree preservation areas percentage type and location shall be in accordance with the approved concept plan. Amenity areas may include a pool, cabana, trails, pavers, pedestrian, and various other amenities. But I did want to note that these currently aren't shown on the concept plan. In lieu of constructing a sidewalk along Rankin Hill Road, the petitioner shall construct a 10-foot multi-use path through the active open space area of the site as generally depicted on the concept plan. The petitioner shall comply with all applicable regulations, including environmental control regulations contained in the ordinance. Stormwater approval, and the developer shall be required to conduct an engineering analysis to determine the utility system improvements required to serve the project, including water system, hydraulic model, sewer pump station, force main hydraulic model, and gravity system flow. Cost for all of this is on the developer. Happy to answer any questions. The applicant did not provide slides for presentation, but are here to answer questions.

Did we have anybody from water and sewer understood?

Yes, I have provided each expert in their field. You are welcome to take your pick.

I believe Kevin Blayton was told was here to speak on the capacity matter.

Yes, sir.

Modifications.

And if you just get even title and role here with Kevin Blayton, I'm the water resources director for the town of Marshall.

Thank you.

So we did review this proposal. And like Ashley mentioned, we are not recommending approval for this because it is a low priority development area within the town. As you move farther out of town, it becomes more difficult to provide water and sewer services. Even though the developer would be installing and paying for those services, they would want to turn those over to the town for town maintenance. Obviously, the farther out of town those services are, the more expensive it is for us to maintain and the more difficult it is for us to maintain it, which is why this area is within Tier 4 as a very low priority area for water and sewer development.

How's our capacity and supply in that area? So would this impact fire or fire safety or other means in terms of what could be provided or what would be necessary in terms of supply?

So we do not have any large water transmission mains in the area for water service. Our largest lines in those areas are going to be an 8-inch, maybe up to a 12-inch within the outwater area. So we would have some concern that, of course, they could model and predict with adequate fire flows within that area based on the number of homes that are in that area and the number of houses that are already in Atwater.

Any questions from the board?

I know Ashley mentioned the wastewater improvement as well. One of the reasons that it's low priority is because the Atwater subdivision itself, when that development was designed, the wastewater system within Atwater was not designed to be extended further to the north or northwest. So that would essentially create an issue where a developer would have to rebuild certain facilities within Atwater to be able to handle the additional capacity.

What's the risk of having a developer do that? Is there a risk to current infrastructure within Atwater?

It's not necessarily a risk within Atwater. It's just the inconvenience for the Atwater residents in there while they're doing that work and the additional flows going to that sewer pump station facility that might create additional wastewater rotors and things like that. Additional maintenance activities, additional service trips to those pump stations. So it's not necessarily a technical issue as much as it would be an inconvenience issue.

So they have to modify one pump station, or is there an addition of a pump station, modification of another one?

We know going in they would have to modify at least one pump station. Depending on the modeling of the utility systems, they may have to do further downstream improvements. We just don't know that at this point.

Okay, so that's part of the engineering and development piece going forward? Yes, sir.

That's the provision that's accounting for any future improvements that might have to be made based on the results of the system modeling.

Okay.

Kevin, just for clarification on one of the conditions here that's stated, It's number 22 says developer shall be required to conduct an engineering analysis to determine utility system capacity improvements required to serve the project with those Improvements you're talking about at water which are off-site. Yes be required to serve this project because if not, I would Rec if that's something that is going to be required I would prefer that that be specifically stated.

Yes, those improvements at Atwater would be required to serve this project. The reason we left it a little more vague is there may be additional improvements beyond the Atwater improvements that might be necessary based on their engineering evaluation.

So would it be fair to say, are those downstream? Yes, ma'am. So downstream improvements beyond the project, really? Yes, ma'am. Okay.

Are there any additional questions for Mr. Blayton while he's at the podium? If not, thanks very much. You're welcome.

I believe if you have any further fire questions, I believe the fire chief. One of the fire chiefs in the back if you have fire questions.

Thanks very much. Thank you. Ms. Lattin, did you have a sequence of folks? You had mentioned you wanted to, you had some folks to do presentations.

I also have police and fire available if you guys have any questions. They're just on call.

Okay. I just didn't want to cut anybody out of your presentation in totality.

Not to interrupt too much, but I do have a question for staff on the conditions, one other thing.

Sorry, just real quick. I just want to let you know they do have a presentation. I'm going to work with them right now on getting that in a presentable format for you guys. OK. So let me do that, and then we'll get the.

Well, thank you. Thank you, James.

Ashley. Yes, ma'am. On number nine, the fee in lieu, it says if a fee in lieu has been paid, Are there fees in lieu being lose here that there have none that have been charged at this time to the applicant, but are there some that would be what I'm what I'm asking is, are there any that are optional for them to choose under the our you do?

None that I'm aware of. They'd have sidewalk. no okay so this is really perhaps intended if there's a fee in lieu required because something cannot be constructed or yes ma'am i a lot of their site has some topographic challenges so it's possible that maybe somewhere they wouldn't be able to do some sidewalk okay but our udo also notes that within 500 feet there's not an option to do a fee in lieu so

Did you have anything additional? No. Okay, but Mike.

No, there was one. I will note that there was a typo on 16 that should be open space instead of on space, so I will correct that when we get to the agreement with the applicant if we get to that point. Okay.

Thank you very much. Any additional questions?

I'd be interested to hear from FIRE and their perspective on it.

Absolutely.

Again, if you don't mind giving us your name. Sure. Good evening.

Absolutely. Good evening. My name is Rob Cord. I'm the deputy chief at the fire department.

Thank you, sir. Yes. So I know this is the eight minute response time. And then just curious to hear your perspective on, you know, if you have concerns with the eight minute response time, if you think it would be an area that potentially would be beyond what you feel would be a reasonable response time.

Sure. So the outwater community is currently within the town limits, so we respond to that area now. The challenge with this proposed property is while it's within the five mile jurisdiction that we require, it is outside of the four minute response time that we set our performance standards to. Some of the challenge there is the route of travel like the police department's slide indicated on how we access that property. Um, if I'm not mistaken, I just want to look at my notes real quick. I think that that slide may have been slightly skewed. Um, station four is the first do a firehouse that would provide service to that community. And it is a seven minute response time, uh, just a little bit lower than what was that was advertised on the slide. So again, our goal is four minutes, uh, by running GIS data and actually traveling that route. Um, just running time, uh, as we were moving, it was a seven minute response time to get to. Fern Hill at Angel Drive was our landing spot there.

And then to get there, would you have to go through at Water Landing? Is that how it would work?

That would be currently the way things are laid out, yes. That's our best response route is Cornelius Road to right on Preston and then going around to Rankin Hill and then Fern Hill from there. There could be further or future connectivity and infrastructure that would provide us a different route in, but that's the current route that we chose.

Any additional questions? Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Certainly appreciate it. Ms. Lattin, was there anyone else that you had that would have?

Police, if you'd like to hear from them, but.

Did any of the board want to hear from police in the matter, or are you comfortable? OK. Seems like the board's comfortable there. So I think at this time, then we would call the applicant forward, Mr. Coley. And again, if you'd please just state your names for the public record.

Can you guys see this on the screen in front of you, or is your screen black? Yes, I can. That's pretty good.

Good evening. My name is Bridget Grant. I'm a land use consultant with Morgan Van Allen, and I'm pleased to be here tonight on behalf of D.R. Wharton. Kristen Bickman is here with me tonight, as well as a number of other members of our team. That was a little bit of a jump scare when you send your presentation in advance just didn't quite make it through, so I really appreciate staff working with me on this really quick transition and give me a second to gather my thoughts. Our presentation really focuses on the elements of the site, what can happen today under existing zoning, what Mooresville can secure through the conditional zoning process, how our plan has changed since that initial community meeting, and how we're responding to transportation, school timing, tree protection utilities, and overall the neighborhood character. So my hope is to clearly explain the development options before you, because we know this is how you consider how Mooresville is going to grow. I'm kind of glad I got to go. After Matt, he gave a phenomenal presentation on the future land use plan. Let me see if this is working. I had to use this one. This is a lot of information to digest, and I'm not going to read all of this to you. I feel like it's something you would have seen in a Planning 101 crash course. It's essentially that every property has some development path, and a rezoning is not simply a request to develop the land, It's a request to allow the governing body to consider a different framework and a different intensity or a different format for the site. In this case, the rezoning would allow Mooresville to consider a plan with specific commitments for attached single family related to density, design, open space, and public infrastructure. The property is within an area that Mooresville has chosen to maintain some planning authority. It's shown in previous area plans, as Ashley mentioned. Well as in the future land use plan that Matt presented earlier tonight And this is really just about us looking at everything on how this plan could move forward Sometimes I like to keep things in simple terms as well And so when I look at something when I'm evaluating it as a planner I try to narrow it down to what are we really asking for when we're bringing this conditional zoning forward we're here because we're asking for something that's not allowed under the existing zoning and So this is really a core comparison. Under Iredell County zoning, the property has a buy rate development option. The county scenario moves it forward with single family residential, but you don't get the same level of control of some of the conditions or open space provisions, some of the architectural characters that you typically do through conditional zoning. So this is just showing that the conditional zoning request, as Ashley described, it caps the development at 140 homes. And it brings with it those binding commitments that she read through. I think there were probably over 20 of them that come with a single family detached home. We're also proposing a voluntary commitment for a for sale community. It puts it in a clustered open space format, which puts all your tree protection and open space outside of individual lots. and elevate some of those transportation improvements and greenway and pedestrian improvements. So the question we're really asking is, have we done for the additional 35 homes, are they justified by the benefits we're trying to bring forward and some of the commitments that you get with the conditional zoning? This slide shows where the property is on the west side of Fernhill Road, west of I-77 and north of Rankin Hill Road. It's directly adjacent, as I mentioned, to another single family community. We understand and appreciate that they're legitimate concerns about growth in this area in different parts of Morrisville that this site is outside of the Moratorium area and just north of the area slated for the interchange improvement at exit 38 Which was identified and again the plan that hasn't been adopted yet but the future land use plan shows that as a major activity center and So the current proposal has changed a bit from our original concept plan, which is why we're back before you this evening. The original concept plan was 127.6 acres and up to 275 homes. The current plan is approximately 73.23 acres and up to 140 single family detached homes. So the project's been reduced by about 54 acres and 135 homes. And the current site plan includes again those site specific standards for some trail connections and open space. The applicant responded to the concerns that we heard during the Community meeting by reducing the footprint reducing the total number of homes and increasing some certainty around how the property would be developed. So the controlling land use character for this area is peninsula residential, as was just described. And it anticipates primarily single family residential development that respects the late front Peninsula character. So when Ashley was presenting that side by side comparison, I think it's important to note that we are still maintaining less than two DUA, two dwelling units per acre format and preserving substantial open space in this area. This property is also located in Mooresville's established annexation service area and has been identified as an area where future growth and utility service has been anticipated. So this is the site plan, a little bit bigger. The site plan includes, again, 140 single-family homes. It identifies our access points, our points for stormwater management, as long as our multi-use path connections to Rankin Road. There's a sidewalk trail connection to the existing multi-use path that gets you all the way down to Cornelius Road. And again, this conditional zoning isn't just about the land use approval. It's trying to create a framework for how the development occurs, where the open space happens, where the tree save, the most beneficial tree save is preserved on the site. those pedestrian connections are made and how access is just coordinated overall so in addition to the commitments shown on the plan and in some subsequent conversations the landowner in response to some of the concerns about response times has offered and expressed a willingness to work with the town regarding a portion of adjacent land that could be dedicated to the town to allow for those future municipal services in this area and again that's an area that's near Exit 38 that's anticipated for a higher level of activity. With conditional zoning you also get to incorporate in the idea of the character and quality of the homes that are proposed on the slide. As we mentioned, there's no vinyl siding. It's intended to be a higher quality. They can through conditional zoning and only through conditional zoning you can kind of secure the specific design characters, lot widths and features. This is another reason why the conditional zoning process matters. It's something that Matt mentioned during the long-range plan conversation. Conditional zoning, in a lot of presentations, I say it's a way to raise the bar. It's a way for us to take what's in our ordinances and even elevate it a little bit higher than that to get a standard that's above what's across the board and do something site-specific and context-specific. Traffic, we understand, has been one of the primary issues. As Ashley mentioned, we've done a traffic and impact analysis study in coordination with NCDOT as well as the town of Morrisville, and we'll be required to make all of those changes. And it's correct that the payment in lieu was put in there in case something happens that precludes you from being able to do something exactly as intended. It gives you some flexibility to work with the town and find another way to accomplish it. We don't always show a timeline of the full build out of a project, but we think it's really important in this context because development doesn't happen immediately upon approval of rezoning. This shows that our construction documents will begin in the fall of 2026 if approved. And construction wouldn't start until the spring sorry, construction document approval in the spring of 2027. So permits and grading would be in summer of 2027, home construction wouldn't begin until sometime in 2028, and full build out wouldn't be until the winter of 2030. So this timeline also identifies when some of the new schools are opening, just demonstrating that the project would not produce students immediately, and the timeline shows that the vertical home construction would begin after anticipated opening of new schools with the first homes projected later in 2028. Oddly, and this is a bit unusual, it's not very often that I say that schools are planned for this area to accommodate growth. We're usually waiting for the schools to follow behind us. Again, I'm not big on reading all of the words on a slide that's this busy. I'm happy to share this with you. But it really just summarizes, these are the topic areas for community feedback that were given to us during the meeting. So it summarizes the major community concerns and how our plan attempted to respond to traffic and safety issues, trees, buffers, and views, stormwater and water quality, overall connectivity, and sidewalks. For traffic and safety, the plan response is that completed TIA, which we didn't have at the time of our community meeting, so we have that additional detail. For trees and buffers and views, the plan response was to work within a smaller footprint on this particular part of the community. We have 25% open space. 25% tree protection, and then we're also preserving those 100-foot stream buffers. We're adhering to the stormwater quality plans. We're working with all the state and local requirements, and we'll be adhering to anything that's applicable to the site. Again, we've got about 1,400 foot of linear greenway, also taking advantage of some of these view corridors that are available and some of the natural resources on the site. And as I mentioned, in addition to the commitments that were put out there today, the property owner has indicated a willingness to go ahead and identify a portion of an adjacent piece of property for future municipal services. So we appreciate your time tonight. I'm glad the power didn't go out before we finished. And staff was quick to address the technology issue, which it feels like it's been that kind of day for me. I just want to close by saying that through conditional zoning, the town gets those commitments, that extra level that you hope to get through conditional zoning that we don't always get. when we're adhering to the baseline ordinance provisions. And I think Matt gave a really good presentation. And one of the things that I caught was he talked about you need to have a willing seller to do something that's in alignment with the future plan. So I guess you could say we're trying to take a very proactive approach and looking forward and what's in that comp plan and the identification of modest infill and a seller that's willing to try to go ahead and align future growth in an area that's been identified for just that. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Are there questions for the applicant? The piece of property that you're speaking about for additional access, is there any way for us to be able to see that, any of the maps that are supplied?

James, are you able to help me point out where that piece of property is, or Don? Do you wanna go to this one or back to the other map? Because he's not at the mic, I'll repeat it for anyone who's listening. Okay. Virtually, the cellar, it's 11 acres right here at the corner of Fernt Hill and Rankin Hill Road. and the seller is willing to dedicate a portion of it, 11 acres is probably a generous amount for municipal services, but a portion of that could go towards future services.

Okay, I didn't know if that might be helpful for the board just to understand.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

If there are no additional...

I've got a question. Could you go back to the slide that shows, as of right, for Ardell County versus what you're proposing? Yes, sir. So on the left side, on the blue, the 105 lots possible, would that be well and septic, or would that be water sewer?

It would be well and septic, sir.

Gotcha. Is it feasible financially for you guys to do that development, or would that not work with having to do well and septic?

It is. It's one of the things before I ever put this slide up. You know, sometimes you can just look and say density is three dwelling units to the acre or two dwelling units to the acre, and what's that automatic math look like? We tried to get something that was more realistic to what it would take if you had well and septic and some preliminary look at what the soil conditions are in that area. So we believe it's a feasible option.

So if it was denied through the town of Mooresville, would D.R. Horton continue to move forward through Iredale County doing well in septic?

I think there's always a chance, and this is where I say you never know what's going to happen between a seller and a landowner. I think they have the option, and they've explored to see what their options are because there's something Mr. Monti wants to sell this piece of property.

Got it.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Katz. Any additional questions? If not, then thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Coley, for assisting.

I am going to mention to the board just because I heard it in the presentation that she mentioned that these are going to be for sale. That is not a condition that is being presented to you nor can it be considered by this board. That is not a land use in your legal counsel's opinion and it sort of lends itself to an argument sort of like if we were considering a religious institution. We can say a religious institution can go there, but we can't say, is it going to be Hindu or Jewish or Muslim or Christian? It's not a use. The use is religious. The use here is residential, whether it's for sale or by rent. So I just want to make sure that that's not a consideration. If they want to do for sale or for rent, that is up to the applicant, but that is not something this board should consider.

Thank you, Ms. Alston. Did you have anything, Mr. Coley?

I learned a couple of new things tonight, so I wanted to talk to you guys about them. The land dedication staff was not aware of. I would highly suggest from a staff perspective that we figure out how much that's going to be to see if it's going to be useful to be fruitful. or municipal service. While it's very generous to offer it, I want to make sure it's functional, especially with the numbers that we heard tonight. I would strongly suggest that you all talk about that as an additional condition. Staff also wanted two more. One more would be some sort of enhanced buffering against the other neighborhoods, as this site is approximately 72% or 72 acres of wooded site. I think that the buffering could be a bit enhanced. And then I wanted to ask you guys about the specific amenities, as those weren't on the concept plan. I saw some of them listed in the conditions, but they're not depicted. So that might be something that you guys think about this evening.

OK. Thank you, Ms. Ladin. Of course. I'll open up the public comment portion at this time. And I think we have three signed up from the public to speak on this, and the first being Erin Peel. Again, Mr. Peel, if you just give your name and address for the public record, please. Sure.

My name's Aaron Peel, and I live at 176 Fern Hill Road, right across from the development that's being considered.

Thank you, sir.

All right. This evening, I want to talk about specifically the neighborhood as far as the surrounding area, right? So this is what I will be telling you about. My wife has some pictures here off our front porch that I'd like to show to the council here to be able to give you an idea of what we currently see versus what we would versus what we would see future.

Sure, if you'd like to. If you'd like to hand something that they can. OK, thank you.

All right, so while she's finishing up, I'm going to go ahead and I'll mess up my three minutes here, OK? So I want to focus on the issue tonight, whether the proposed development fits the existing character of the area. Across the street from the proposed development are custom-built homes on large lots. The smallest lot is approximately 0.8 acres. The homes directly across from the proposed built area are closer to four acres, and even if you were to look at the five smallest lots, the average is about one acre, okay? D.R. Horton, excuse me, when being proposed directly across, from these is functionally different from what we currently have. The R. Horton representatives stated that this plan proposes lots that are approximately 56 wide and 7,000 square feet in size, about one sixth of an acre. That creates a high density layout of roughly six homes per acre on the lot. This is not a subtle change. This is an abrupt shift from the one acre to multiple acre homes that are currently in the area roughly 10 feet apart, or excuse me, with these homes being roughly 10 feet apart. This is not compatible with the existing pattern of development along Fern Hill Road. At the neighborhood meeting, residents raised concerns about the lack of buffering between the proposed development and existing homes. We were told that buffering could be addressed later during the building phase. But these communities are highly engineered and planned well in advance. Buffering is not clearly defined and required as part of this plan is ultimately and likely to be forgotten and not implemented. Good planning requires these elements be addressed up front, not left to uncertainty for later possibility. Today, when you drive down Fern Hill Road, you don't see rooftops and rows of homes. You see mature trees, open space, and a natural corridor. This proposal replaces that with a continuous streetscape of closely spaced homes that there is no meaningful transition, no substantial buffer, and just a direct contrast between two different types of development. Approving this level of density here also sets a precedent for similar development along this corridor. I also wanted to note that even with 140 homes, this project is proposed on 73 acres, and a significant portion of land is not buildable. This means that the actual development portions will be more concentrated. The question is not whether this is less than the original proposal. The question is whether this belongs here. And based on the existing character of Fern Hill Road, it does not. If this plan is approved, despite the concerns, we respectfully request that a substantial engineered buffer be defined with, excuse me, engineered buffer with defined width and tree preservation be required and that the road improvements be completed prior to the issuance of the first permits. I respectfully ask that you deny this proposal and thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Peel. The second speaker tonight is Kelly Hughes,

Good evening.

I'm Kelly Hughes. I live at 148 Fernhill Road. I have pictures as well, if you're not familiar with the area. OK, so after reviewing the revised plans, I do not believe that the changes meaningfully addressed the concerns that led the planning board to recommend the denial of the original application. So the question before you tonight is not simply whether the application has changed, but whether the changes sufficiently addressed the impacts on our community. Prior denial was based on land use and character of the area, and there's been no change to land use. And that denial was 8 to 1, just a reminder. So the revised proposal removes approximately 49 to 50 acres of application. The development pattern remains substantially the same. The decrease appears to be the houses that were removed on the removed tract. So that reduction in total lots. The density of the proposed subdivision has not meaningfully changed. The portion of the development closest to Fernhill Road, the area most directly impacting the existing residents, Shows very little change. Actually, it increased by one lot, as I'm counting the little rectangles. Approximately 41 acres of the site is identified as open space or protected land. So it leaves roughly 32 acres for development, meaning that there is 140 homes concentrated on 32 acres. Rough math could be four to six homes per acre, probably more towards four if you think about the roadways and stuff that they need to develop as well. This project is developed under high density provisions according to the concept plan. And the density calculation was also questioned during those planning conversations. Let's see. The revised plan also includes a stub road extending to the northern property line, preserving the ability to connect to that future development if that adjacent property is developed. And so as a result, the concerns raised regarding compatibility, traffic, schools, infrastructure, is largely unchanged and i know they called out the residential peninsula so if you look at what that means it means infill development guided by the context of the surrounding neighborhood single family detached if you look at matt's new study mooresville tomorrow areas to enhance infill development anticipated develop in a manner with complements the existing buildings and surrounding environment keeping with the land use density's location character We cannot see Atwater from Fern Hill. It is all trees. It's beautiful. Even when you come down Rankin Hill towards Fern Hill Road, that whole area there even looks different once you come out of that little roundabout. The area of Atwater to the right before you turn onto Fern Hill is a substantial buffer. Going to the next map with conservation and development, single lot residential, large lots. These lots are 0.16, 0.2. Development change in intensity map, modest infill. Again, a manner that complements existing buildings and the surrounding environment. Do I hear a beep? I hear a beep. I do want to say that...

I'll ask you to try to wrap up here. Okay.

I just want to call out, again, traffic, exit 32, transportation study, Cornelius Road, sufficient crash concentration. And a majority of that traffic is going to go through Atwater. If you're there 7.30, 7.45 in the morning, you're sitting 30 cars deep coming out of Atwater to make a left on Cornelius. Schools are Folden Shepherd Elementary. We already heard from the superintendent. It's at 115% capacity. The new Parker Town Elementary is going to open up at capacity without these additional subdivisions opening up. And during the town meeting, we talked about there was a bunch of atwater residents they were concerned about the traffic coming through their existing wooded views that they were promised when they purchased their lots and how it's not going to have amenities so they're concerned with those residents coming into their neighborhood to use their amenities the fern hill residents the lack of buffering and just cumulative impact you know i we get growth is inevitable but thoughtful planning is what we need to do so i respectfully request you deny And if it does go through substantial engineering, again, with the buffer, with the roads, and with the reduction of the number of acres in the houses, the roadways, the TIA, there was less requirements there. So just take that into consideration as well, please.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Anybody want to see pictures? There's a blind curve. I wanted to call that out as well.

You're welcome to distribute those there to start, and we can pass them across. I made little notes if you want.

And I was hoping that the fire chief would say something about it. Both exits and entrances came on from the road, not on the road that the residents came in from.

Thank you. And we'll have those here at the end. We'll get those back to you here at the evening. Our last speaker was Mr. Beck.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board members of the community. My comments are taken from the technical review which I read over to each of the board members with so many uses of the words could would then potential would fail appears to would require minor increases would be limited throughout this technical review i question is the entire process and proposal is froth with implied maybes lacks any semblance of true consideration of safety and is defined within the documents and the towns and as defined within the documents in the town's limited ability to meet current response times for this outlying development in Northern Fringe and Mooresville for both fire and police. For police, it quote, lies outside our current patrol and crash response zones. Why would I ever consider becoming a resident as I would put my family's safety at risk each and every day? With limited public safety response times, why would I subject myself to real possibility of increased homeowners insurance rates? Why place the town's ISO 1 fire rating at risk? That's what this does, in my opinion. The most laughable comment in the technical review reads, and could generate comments from the Atwater Landing residents. Talk about an understatement. Wow. I would be a fool to live in this proposed development. In my opinion, this board should be advised to deny this project and thus not add to the town's maintenance burden and knowingly put citizens at risk. A comment about potential tax revenue. The developer's slide says no revenue for the town. I beg to differ. What about the sales tax? It's revenue even if it's only built under Diredale County standards and not Mooresville standards. We still get tax revenue. With all the woulds, coulds, subjectivity, maybes and perhaps that are both spoken and unspoken why would we accept the risk why would we put our iso fire rating at risk just a comment from personal experience doing a ride along after attending the police academy we happen to be coming through at water about 11 30 at night they got a call The officer popped the lights on. He definitely had to drastically slow down to make the roundabouts, so he lost time getting to the site. How much do you think a fire truck is going to have to slow down to go around a roundabout? Again, why put our ISO rating at risk? This is not good for the town. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Beck. That's the last speaker I have signed up, so I'll close the public comment portion. And I would ask the applicant if you had rebuttal to any of those comments.

We appreciate all the feedback, and we'll continue to refine the plan. One of the reasons you can't see any of the homes from Atwater is because there's a pretty extensive natural feature that creates that buffer. And so we're looking at ways to fence or add landscaping along Fern Hill Road that would give buffer. and take into consideration Ashley's comments about enhanced buffers. We're happy to get more specific about the potential land area for dedication to make sure, I mean, our intent is for it to be a usable thing that would help address there is future growth intended and planned for this area. I think the interchange improvement is inevitably, and again, future land use plans are inevitably going to bring more growth to this particular portion of the community. And so we're trying to find ways that we can help support how that happens and make it safe.

Are there any questions for the applicant while at the podium? Thank you. Appreciate the comment back on that. And Ms. Lattin, did you have some things to add?

Nope. I just wanted you guys to consider that enhanced buffer, the possible dedication of land, Yeah. But that's up to y'all. It's just something that staff wants you to consider.

Well, does the board have some comments or discussion around those items? Your thoughts?

Sounds like there's more work to be done. So as presented, I would not be in favor of it and vote to deny it.

Yeah, I guess I might my 2 cents.

For what it's worth.

Since it since it's a Tier 4 situation and we look at opportunities for infill and the expansion of utilities in the maintenance of those mutual utilities so far out. And it raises the question to me how how much we continue to push out when we still have all of this. Is this where we really want to take the risks that are inherent in this particular problem? Me personally, I'm kind of with Miko. I mean, I think all of those things that were mentioned by you would need to be clarified, but I wouldn't be in favor of voting for this at this point in time. And I'd just add as well, It's great to talk about exit 38. I hope I live that long.

Yes, sir. It's interesting. It's deceiving that it's less than two dwelling units per acre on this big tract. and then the development actually shrinks down to this little area with little small lots that feels like Queens. And I think to myself, when my girls, one is a freshman in college and one just graduated high school, come back if I'm alive in 50 years, probably won't be, and they look at it and say, dad, what did you approve? Why do you have this neighborhood that used to be all trees and now we've got these little lots where Archie Bunker could have lived back in the day. And I came from that area, and it's not what I'm looking for for the future, not for me, but for my grandchildren if I'm here. Just my opinion.

Can I just add to that?

You know, we can't talk about the new plan because it's not approved yet. Maybe it won't be. But there's a lot of, there's a rural model where if you've got houses that are on an acre, two acres, three acres,

You got to turn your microphone on. I'm sorry.

I thought I did. I pushed it. Oh, it's defective.

It's me.

I'm defective. I said, we can't look at what we have. Don't seek guidance from the new plan, tomorrow plan, today. but there is a whole section on rural development, primarily to the east, but it could be to the north as well, where you've already got these large lots with large homes with a lot of concern. This is one of the goals that was put down when we talked to these hundreds of people, and it came down to put this plan together. This area is already moving in that direction. I think it would be... A bad decision to make a decision today to change the nature of that before we get a chance to see whether that's really what should go up.

Any additional comments?

We didn't hear from the police, but I read Assistant Chief Cook's comments, and that's concerning to me also. I'm just throwing that out there.

I think my biggest concern is that the access is essentially through at-water landing. So, you know, emergency services, and Mr. Beck brought it up, are going to have to go through those roundabouts, right? Fires got to go through the roundabouts. So you have traffic that's flowing, and this is more dense than what's allowable by right. So it puts a burden on at-water landing from a traffic perspective. That was one of my biggest concerns when this came to us last time. And then also the utilities connection, and I feel like that really got brought – front and center more in this presentation than it did last time, that also puts a burden on that water landing. So I think between the traffic and the utilities, it's concerning. And it's something that really wouldn't be an issue if it was built by right from a utilities perspective. And if it was built by right, it would be less units with less traffic.

Ms. Alston, I have a question for you. If what I'm hearing from the board is a general consensus that's not supported, would you still like the developer to come up and to agree to the conditions with any modifications, or could I call for a vote and see where the board stands?

Also, would you guys like to add any additional conditions, specifically to the buffering amenities or that land dedication?

so um we can do it either way um my giving you the scenarios if the board uh has a motion to deny and that passes then there's no need to agree to these conditions as stated however um If it fails or if there's a motion to approve, then we do need these to be agreed to by the applicant. Going through the process of saying are there any modifications this board would like to hear or would like to see does have some benefit in that it gives the developer some idea of what you do want to see. and it gives the board an idea, the board of commissioners at least, an idea of what you want to see and what the developer is willing to agree to or not. So that's the benefit of going through the exercise of what modifications would you like to see. If it's something that you just don't think is doable, that's another option. Or you don't want to spend the time to do that and let the board decide what modifications they want to see. Either way. But if you want to call for a motion first and see if it's a denial, we can do that. Or if you want to have some further conversation, we can do that.

Do you think in these discussions, I know we try to have a deeper discussion through this process just so we give the town boards some clarity of thoughts in this as well. And I think you've certainly made that as a point. If the board at this point, if the feeling is towards denial, I'm not sure. I think those points would be heard in the conversation because I think most of the town board members watch this meeting to hear the discussion. Agreed.

I mean, I did make notes of where people stated there might be, where staff has mentioned and where you all have made comments. I've made a few notes there, so we can go through them if you would like. But if you don't, that's, again, up to the board.

Personally, I think we have enough to vote on. I think there's plenty of commentary in the record for the town board to consider as is. That's just my feeling.

OK. Mr. Chair, it's really your call.

Well, then at this time, I'll ask if you would like to make a motion.

I'll make a motion. I make a motion to recommend the town board deny CZ202603 as the proposal is inconsistent with the town's one Mooresville comprehensive plan, while the site is designated Peninsula Residential. The proposed scale and design do not align with the intended dimensional standards outlined for the area. The proposal is unreasonable and not in the public interest because it introduces inconsistent development patterns compared to nearby large lot single family dwellings. It's designated as a low priority tier four utility growth area and promotes residential sprawl in an area not well serviced by public safety services and infrastructure.

So we have option two to deny from Mr. Red Arrow. Do I have a second to that motion? I have a second from Ms. Smith. All in favor of option two to deny the request? So that would be unanimous. And at this time, we would recommend to the town board not to approve the plan as presented to us tonight.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

That takes us to item 12, administrative items. Mr. Coley?

I passed out a update from several of the last cases that went through town board for you guys. So just refer to that handout for the update on how all those cases have been heard and proceeded with.

Well, we appreciated that, by the way. And actually, I think Michael and I were a little bit surprised that we all leaned in the same direction, it looked like, on all of those.

You're consensus builders. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

Well, I do, again, not to ad lib, but I do appreciate the board's discussion on these points and flushing out things for the town board to be able to hear from this presentation that maybe provides better direction or better questions from them that they can build upon. Any additional administrative items?

I've got a question for staff. Seems to be a bit of a thorn in the side, and I know it is for me too. So the area in front of QT on 150 and the zipper merge, which I'm sure people who follow social media have seen what's going on. So if I remember correctly, it was approved with the developers of the QT to create a storage lane. City Council Chambers, If i'm correct, and now it seems like there's some confusion, because there used to be some merge arrows going left into the lane going East and those arrows seem to have been either removed or the paint is gone. And now it's only your right turn arrow into the new apartments. So I believe that it should still be a storage lane. And there is some confusion and people getting all upset. So just hoping somebody could look into that to see if I'm missing something. Because I would love those arrows to be put back, even if they're NCDOT, to show that this is storage.

So I don't have an answer for you tonight. But we can definitely look at and see if we can figure out what's happening and what's going to happen in the future with that project.

Any other discussion points or questions? And if not, do I have a motion for adjournment? So moved. The motion, second. And all in favor, I'm assuming.

That's what it looked like.

Thank you very much.