News

Planners grant preliminary OK to 50 townhomes on Greenville Highway

Cross-hatched parcel outlined in yellow marks location of a proposed Greenville Highway townhome development. [CITY DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT]

By Bill Moss, Published: September 18, 2023

A townhome development on Greenville Highway south of Brookdale moved a step closer to construction after the developer significantly scaled back the number of dwellings it had proposed last year.

Washington, D.C.-based, Lock 7 Development LLC had requested a rezoning last summer to build a 185-unit apartment complex on the 7.4-acre tract between Brookdale Avenue and Balsam Road. After neighboring homeowners packed a public hearing to oppose the complex, the Hendersonville Planning Board voted unanimously to recommend denial of the land-use change, citing incompatibility with the surrounding neighborhoods, traffic impacts and potential flooding.

Lock 7’s revised request proposes 50 two-story townhomes in 11 buildings ranging from 7,549 to 9,923 square feet. Because the current Greenville Highway Mixed Use zone imposes no density cap, the new proposal requires site plan and plat approval only by the planning staff and Planning Board, not a rezoning.

Before opening a public hearing on the proposal last week, Chair Jim Robertson emphasized that the Planning Board’s review was an administrative process only and that general opposition to density was irrelevant.

Lynne Williams of Chadwick Avenue lamented that as a result “we have our hands tied behind our back” in opposing the revised plans before citing traffic impacts, the loss of trees and what she described as inadequate parking.

Comments from neighboring homeowners and the Planning Board in August 2022 “helped us reimagine the project into something that we think is a great fit for this site,” developer Eric Mioduski said. “We’ve scaled the density down 70 percent from 185 units to 50 units. That decrease in density will also lessen the traffic impact, which was the No. 1 concern from that previous proposal. We had a TIA (traffic impact analysis) which found that there was no negative impact with the 185 units, so, taking it down to 50, we’re pretty confident that there’s going to be minimal impact on traffic from this project.”

The townhome development would cover 3.4 acres of the site with rooftop or pavement, or 49 percent of the site, down from 65 percent. “We also included as part of that more habitat for the wildlife in addition to the perimeter tree buffer,” he said. The plan also drops the height from three stories to two and raises the parking ratio from 1.3 spaces to two spaces per unit.

“So at the end of the day, these changes were a direct result of the feedback that we get from council members and planning members that are here today,” Mioduski said.