News

GOOD JOB!/NEEDS WORK: Senior housing, water wars, birding trail

By Lightning Editorial Board, Published: May 1, 2024

GOOD JOB! In voting unanimously last month to rezone 2¼ acres on Greenville Highway at Chadwick Avenue to allow construction of 60 affordable apartments for seniors, the City Council wisely waved off a short-sighted recommendation from its planning board and struck a blow for desperately  needed housing. The proposal by WDT Development LLC maxed out on the scoring measures used by the N.C. Housing Finance Agency because of its proximity to medical offices, four supermarkets, six (!) pharmacies plus other amenities — the land is across the street from a bus stop, to name one. The other reason the Hendersonville site scored so high is because the need is so great here. Thursday night the council is scheduled to adopt a resolution in support of WDT’s application for tax-credit financing, an investment sweetener the developer needs to move ahead. The resolution contains the astonishing revelation from the 2021 Bowen housing report that the occupancy rate for multi-family rental units here is 99.8 percent. Forty-three percent of renters were cost burdened, the report also showed. The same information was available to the planning board, by the way. Yet that did not stop the advisers from giving the highly speculative comments from opposing neighbors greater weight than the needs of lower-income seniors and the greater good of the community overall. The council ought to seriously evaluate the makeup of its planning board, which tends to be easily misled by exaggerated NIMBY comments and too often votes against the city’s best interest.

NEEDS WORK … The latest outbreak of the city-county water wars appears to have been triggered by county commissioners’ fever dream that the city had secretly sabotaged the county’s Clear Creek sewer plant application. The water wars sequel is wrapped up in multiple issues that are familiar points of tension between the City Council and Board of Commissioners: the city’s required annexation for sewer service and an inability to agree on a “growth ring” outside the city’s current boundaries among them. The county’s blowup over a new and unexpected demand from state regulators for more information on the Clear Creek sewer plant, poor reviews from the public of its newly adopted comp plan and even the fact that voters fired two county commissioners in the March 5 primary seem to have dialed up the animosity. Both sides ought to take a deep breath, declare détente, sit down at the negotiating table and settle this lomg-running fight once and for all.

GOOD JOB! The Friends of the Oklawaha Greenway on Saturday dedicated the new Birding Trail along the pedestrian-bike path, another improvement that the Friends have gifted to the public with their spirited behind-the-scenes work efforts. The new trail features a series of colorful interpretive signs containing information about our feathered friends as well as QR codes that link to interesting facts on birds wanderers are likely to see. Check out the three eBird hotspots — areas of high bird activity. They’re at the south end in Jackson Park, the north end near the Berkeley Park parking area and around the red kiosk near North Main.