Ardrey Kell apartment plan still too large, council member and city staff says
The developer planning apartments already scaled back the plan once, but some say it's still too big for the area; if rezoning fails this month, the opening of 2 new schools will be delayed, CMS says
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Ballantyne apartment plan needs to be scaled back further, city council member says; timeline for new schools could be affected
by Cristina Bolling
Two weeks ago, the developer of a hotly contested apartment complex proposed for Ardrey Kell Road downsized the project after nearby residents complained it would generate too much traffic in an already-congested area. Now City Councilman Ed Driggs, who represents the neighborhood, and city planning staff say the project is still too large.
The apartments are part of a rezoning petition by Woodfield Development and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that also includes a new public elementary school designed to relieve overcrowding at nearby schools. The two projects are part of a land deal between CMS and Woodfield that also includes apartments and a new high school along Johnston Road at Community House Road.
The rezoning petition for both projects are set to come before city council on Feb. 21, and Driggs said CMS officials have told him that if the petitions don’t pass at the meeting that the new elementary and high schools would need to be delayed by a year. The elementary school is targeted to open in 2023, and the new high school is planned for 2024.
The Ardrey Kell site is a tract that CMS bought years ago, knowing that new schools would be needed in south Charlotte to relieve overcrowding, and that land was being gobbled up at a fast pace.
But once CMS decided it didn’t need that much land to accommodate an elementary school, it decided to sell a portion to Woodfield in a swap that also includes CMS paying Woodfield $15M in cash for land at the corner of Community House and Johnston roads for a new Ballantyne-area high school.
The city’s zoning advisory committee on Tuesday voted 7-0 to recommend approving the Ardrey Kell rezoning. But city zoning staff said they don’t recommend approving it because the housing density is higher than what’s called for in the city’s land use plan.
Driggs says he won’t support the rezoning petition in its current form, and said he’s trying to forge an agreement between Woodfield, CMS and the city to reduce the number of housing units in exchange for CMS reducing the value of the Ardrey Kell Road property, basically giving it to Woodfield for less money.
Woodfield had originally planned to build 475 housing units on Ardrey Kell Road, but then downsized the project to 349 units — 299 apartments and 50 townhomes — with 10% being made available to residents earning less than 80% of the area’s median income.
City council members have a lot of influence on rezonings in their district, so there’s a good chance that how Driggs votes will decide the rezoning outcome. Typically, council members defer to the opinion of the member whose district the rezoning is in when deciding how to vote.
Driggs told The Ledger that the rezoning represents “a cocktail of high-complexity issues” that citizens are passionate about: school overcrowding, housing and traffic. A few dozen constituents logged into a Zoom call with Driggs Wednesday to voice their opposition to the petition.
“We are required often to make tough choices in terms of accommodating the growth of the city. … But I believe this has to happen in a controlled fashion and within bounds,” Driggs said on the Zoom call. “I think you can pursue the goal of achieving diversity of housing and higher density without necessarily creating something like this.”
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of The Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Contributing photographer/videographer: Kevin Young, The 5 and 2 Project