Business

Developer, homeowners spar over apartment project at Blue Ridge Mall

Rendering shows a proposed four-story 114-unit apartment building behind Blue Ridge Mall. The developer is seeking a rezoning to allow the project. [COX UNIVERSAL]

By Bill Moss, Published: February 12, 2025

Whether Hendersonville gets a mid-rise building offering studio and one-bedroom apartments at workforce rental rates will hinge on how the city planning board and ultimately the City Council view the project: It’s either an unacceptable and incompatible intrusion into a stable development of small homes occupied by seniors or an appropriate land-use transition between residential property and Blue Ridge Mall.

Both views were on display in stark relief on Jan. 29 at City Hall when planners hosted a neighborhood compatibility meeting during which the developers described the project and neighboring homeowners asked questions and raised objections.

The developer, Cox Universal of Johnson City, Tenn., builds and manages apartments and hotels in Tennessee and the Carolinas. It is seeking conditional zoning approval to construct a four-story building containing 114 one-bedroom and studio apartments ranging from 470 to 540 square feet.

Neighbors from Blue Ridge Villas, just across a tree line from the mall’s rear parking lot, and homeowners on Freeman and Jack streets, strongly objected to the project on the grounds of privacy, traffic, light, noise and stormwater runoff.

“I just think it’s at least one story too high,” Blue Ridge Villas resident James Campistrous said. “You’d look right into these poor people’s houses. That’s a killer. No one wants anybody looking into their house.”

‘Closed for business’ sign

Lynne Williams, a frequent opponent of high density and commercial development, challenged the developers when they said it would be impractical to design the project to handle a 1,000-year hurricane like Helene. She said she thought it would be done and, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, should be required.

“Every developer would be bankrupt if they just went out to shoot for the stars and hope and pray that there’s a market there to buy or rent their product,” Shane Abraham responded. “If we can do all the things you’re talking about, you need to put a ‘closed for business’ sign in Hendersonville and say, ‘We’re going to take the taxes and the costs that come with more schools and jails and road maintenance and all those other things — we’re going to take the increased cost of maintaining as we are with no new population.

“If Hendersonville decides to do that, they can do it,” he added. “And we won’t come here, because we know it’s closed for business.”

Hendersonville, like many desirable cities across the South, will either accommodate some level of higher density development or refuse to grow altogether, Abraham said.

“There’s lots of markets in the Southeast that people have become in love with, and the populations are going to keep coming and they’re going to have to have somewhere to live,” he said.

A ‘softer transition’ from residential to commercial

Universal Cox, which also built the Universal at Lakewood apartments in the horseshoe of land around the post office annex, had asked for a rezoning last year to build an extended-stay hotel on the same tract of land in a grassy area just beyond the mall parking lot.

Universal partner Philip Cox said the company revised the proposal based on neighbors’ objections.

“The buildings can look very similar, but in regard to the amount of traffic, and in regard to a lot of the things that we were hearing, with the hotel in the neighborhood meeting last time — lots of comments about crime, about the turnover in the hotel rooms, and the things that came with that. The instability of it, we heard, was something that folks didn’t want. And so we thought, we can’t control the price of the land, but what we can do is look at something that’s residential. Because we heard a lot of that: ‘We would rather it be a residential project.’”

Cox said the apartment building is “a softer transition” from single-family residential to the mall and other retail and services on Four Seasons Boulevard, and also would be compatible with the higher density goals for the area set forth in the city’s newly adopted comp plan.

Ken Fitch, another regular opponent of high density development, disagreed with that.

“It is always a major issue when you have a multi-story building adjacent to single family homes. That’s incompatible,” he said. “That’s inescapable but that is the reality of what is being created, and it really does alter the quality of life for all the adjacent homeowners. .. This design does not resemble at all what was envisioned for the mall. The design that you have adds to the incompatibility.”

Fitch asked whether the apartment dwellers might rent their units out via Airbnb or VRBO.

“We don’t allow subleases in any of the communities we manage in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee,” Cox said. “All that is driven by the lender. The lender wants stability. It’s just not part of our model. We don’t offer furnished units, and we’re not in the Airbnb short-term business. … This is workforce housing. Workforce housing is our niche.”

Depending on the developer’s timeline for submitting a site plan, the rezoning could be heard by the Planning Board and City Council in either March or April.