PITTSBORO — The Town of Pittsboro recently paved the way for the expansion of mixed-use developments around the Chatham Park area.
At its Jan. 13 regular business meeting, the board held three public hearings with the main two hearings dealing with rezoning requests submitted by Highcroft Investors LLC.
One request was to rezone approximately 34 acres of property located off of U.S. 64 Business East at the intersection of Eubanks Road from Residential (RA, RA2) to Community Mixed-Use Center (CMUC-CZ).
The property abuts Chatham Park's PDD and plans to mirror in a lot of ways the neighboring property.
"This particular piece is going to presumably house 140 residential parcels and a maximum of 100,000 square footage of nonresidential," said Planning Director Randall Cahoon-Tingle.
In addition, approximately 6.9 acres of the parcel will be donated to the town to be used as the site for a fire station, public park or both.
"This is the first site where I think Chatham Park staff and the fire department are all on the same page with the location," said Town Manager Jonathan Franklin.
However, the commissioners did raise some concerns.
"My greatest concern with all of this is that there is no offer of affordable housing in a crisis situation for affordable housing," said Commissioner John Bonitz.
"There are lots of needs in Pittsboro that would be designated as community needs," responded the applicant's attorney Nick Robertson. "For sure, affordable housing is one of them. Another one of them is transportation and connectivity. You have the need for parks, the need for fire safety, and you can't meet all those community needs in one project."
In the end though, the two sides did agree on a condition to provide affordable housing units equal to 7.5% of the number of dwelling units constructed for the development.
The other rezoning request was for 122.5 acres of property bounded on both the east and west by the Chatham Park PDD from RA, RA-2 and R-12 to CMUC-CZ.
"The proposed mixed-uses on this property will support compact design with a variety of housing types and uses and pedestrian oriented building and street design," said the applicant's attorney, Patrick Bradshaw. "The potential uses include single-family residences and high-density housing such as apartments and condos. The development will also maintain the scale and character of established neighborhoods while allowing a flexible range of housing types along with office and commercial uses."
The property is located between two areas of the Chatham Park PDD that are already approved for similar uses and densities.
Like the prior rezoning, the development also includes the 7.5% affordable housing requirement.
The third hearing dealt with text amendments to the UDO intended to result in better functionality.
"The majority of these deal with removing redundant language from the UDO and to provide greater clarity of standards," said Pittsboro Project Analyst Jenna Peterson.
Following each hearing, the board approved the requests.
The board was also presented with the findings from their 2023-24 audit report, which came back clean.
"The town once again received an unmodified opinion on its financial statements," said Jay Sharpe of SharpePatel CPA. "That's a clean audit opinion, the best possible opinion that the Town can receive and the opinion the Town should strive for year in and year out."
The Town of Pittsboro Board of Commissioners will next meet Feb. 10.