Developer proposes a Major, Visual Shock

A proposed Lorimer Spring development of 60 apartments for senior citizens is advancing with no official notification to, nor input from, neighborhood residents. Livable Raleigh has been on this case because it clearly shows serious flaws in the City’s planning, and a local Lorimer and Garland Neighborhood Group has been formed.

Livable Raleigh deserves a big vote of thanks for their expertise and perseverance in tackling the collateral damage issues the City of Raleigh has been willing to ignore as they pursue their goals. City Councils and officials of the past appeared to have opted more heavily for growth in the tug of war between growth and neighborhood protection and preservation. This has led to a climate of favoritism allowing developers to come out on top and citizens of Raleigh’s long-time neighborhoods to be left literally in the dust, nasty red dust, living alongside eyesores and street issues, and generally deleterious effects on their quality of life. Livable Raleigh offers intelligent and dedicated advice and assistance to take on what the City would rather ignore.

As far as the Lorimer and Garland Neighborhood Group is concerned, it seems that the next step to confront this Lorimer Spring development proposal is the route of asking for a change to the City’s Transit Overlay District. As it has been applied here, it allows a complete bypass of zoning regulations in favor of a long-term growth and transit plan that will be many years away and will not even place a station within the required distance of the parcel of land in question.

But the Council-adopted UDO (Unified Development Ordinance) and accompanying Bus Rapid Transit plans and Transit Overlay Districts have all grown upon one another, a house of cards that the City wants to cling to even when logic defies the outcome that is truly collateral damage to a lovely older neighborhood.

I support pursuing that option and am grateful to Livable Raleigh for showing the way to attacking it. Given that the City department’s regulations and procedures, as we heard with street issues and with water/sewer issues, require employees with plenty of expertise to bury their heads in the sand and not look at issues of street traffic capacity, parking issues, emergency access, load on sewer and water lines, I fear none of these issues will be tackled until it’s too late to effect any changes in the development plans.

Tim Morgan of Evergreen clearly admitted in a recent West CAC meeting that the building his company proposes for this parcel will be a major visual shock for the neighborhood (see the images below), and I believe it will also be a shock in terms of traffic problems, street parking, access issues along narrow roads with ditches and steep drop-offs on one or both sides, and a load that aging sewer and water infrastructure might not be able to handle.

But for all of this, City department officials say they cannot look at nor comment on any of it in advance of a fully formed and fully funded site plan that will have by then gone on too long for it to be stopped, an awful catch-22 that this neighborhood will be stuck with.

And the residents of this proposed senior development will also be stuck – with not enough parking for residents with vehicles, with 25% of residents having no vehicles by Mr. Morgan’s estimate and needing to walk for services access, along these difficult narrow streets where there are no sidewalks and where the local police captain outlines clearly that there are crime issues. The bus line that in a way prompted this whole thing – the station won’t even be within the walkable half mile the Transit Overlay District seems to call for, and even that is so many years in the future that the City cannot advance beyond early planning stages. Those residents as well as the current residents of this neighborhood will be in for many unpleasant surprises.

I know that Larry King as the prime mover behind the Lorimer and Garland Neighborhood Group will follow through in pursuing changes to the Transit Overlay District wording because it is clearly wrongly applied in this situation, and I hope that District D Councilor Jane Harrison will support the move to change the transit overlay impact on this neighborhood and participate in the meetings called for by the process.

The images below show the home as it is currently and a photoshopped rendering of the proposed development to be built next door. The “major visual shock” described by the developer.

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