News

Ivy Crossing would add 74 homes off Fifth Avenue

A proposed subdivision between Fifth Avenue West and U.S. 64 would add 74 homes between Hendersonville and Laurel Park.

By Lightning Reports, Published: February 6, 2020

A developer that has built more than 2,000 homes in Henderson County wants to build 74 more, a mile from Hendersonville’s Main Street.

The Hendersonville City Council is expected to take up a rezoning application next month to allow the homes, which would be built on lots averaging around a fifth-acre on 16 acres north of Fifth Avenue West and east of Westbrook Road.
The development request, from Greenville, South Carolina-based Windsor Built Homes, would transform one of the larger pieces of vacant land west of the central business district into a subdivision made up of a large loop and three cul de sacs. The land, which has been in the Ewbank family since the 1880s, has been on the market for 2½ years.
Development interest is on the rise on the available acreage between Hendersonville and Laurel Park. The Fifth Avenue rezoning request comes six weeks after the Laurel Park Town Council endorsed a 129-unit development of senior apartments on U.S. 64, essentially the same project that the Hendersonville City Council turned down three years ago. After that defeat, the developer of the senior apartments approached the Laurel Park Town Council and agreed to be annexed into the town.
Around 75 homeowners surrounding the Fifth Avenue land turned out for a neighborhood compatibility meeting last week to ask questions or express opposition. Many said the density, at 4.75 unit an acre, was too high. Others expressed concerns about traffic, stormwater runoff, clearing of trees (70 percent would be removed) and compatibility with Hendersonville’s West Side Historic District.
The proposed subdivision would be called Ivy Crossing, after the name the Ewbank family called the driveway, Ivy Lane, for many years. The land contains a large white house built in 1952 and two smaller cottages. The larger house is the home of the sellers, Spence Campbell and his wife, Marianne Ewbank Campbell.
Windsor homes has built hundreds of home in Henderson and Buncombe counties, including those in River Stone on Butler Bridge Road, Livingston Farms in Fletcher and Mallard Run in Arden. During the neighborhood compatibility meeting
last week, Scott Street, of Windsor homes, and engineer Will Buie made the following points about the
development:
• The homes would be one or two stories, between 1,500 and 2,200 square feet, with attached garages. Projected buildout of the subdivision is two to three years, Street said.
• The developer would construct the streets to city standards and turn them over to the city when the subdivision is complete. • The stormwater sewer system would comply with the city’s stringent stormwater runoff regulations. As a result, Buie said, neighboring
landowners would see less runoff
than they do today “because they would gather the runoff, control it and release it in various places,” according to minutes of the public meeting.
• The proposed development, Buie said, is compatible with the city’s comprehensive land-use plan, which calls for medium density residential development of two to eight units per acre in the area.
• A traffic impact analysis, based on 86 units instead of the proposed 74 homes, projected 50 trips out of the subdivision and 16 into it in the morning and 55 in and 33 out at
the afternoon peak travel time. The additional traffic is not enough to require road work, the report by T. M. Teague Engineering said. Access to the subdivision would be on Fifth Avenue West, a city street, and Westbrook Road, a state road. Westbrook Road at Fifth Avenue and U.S. 64 would maintain acceptable levels of service, by NCDOT’s measure of congestion and safety, the traffic engineers said.
The Hendersonville Planning Board takes up the request at
4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 10. After that review, the application is expected to go on to the City Council on Thursday, March 5.