Shane Collins has lived in different areas of Raleigh since 2001. He recently sent this email to Council’s Economic Development & Innovation Committee. The Committee is meeting May 10 at 1:30pm to discuss TC-12-21, which would allow businesses to be operated in what up until then had been residential neighborhoods.
I would like to register my concerns via email as I am not able to attend your 1:30 meeting at city hall on May 10th.
I am a homeowner who has owned homes near NC State, Lake Johnson, and now North Raleigh. I chose to live in these areas for different reasons and moved away when my needs and the available area amenities changed.
I am very concerned about TC 12-21 and the repercussions of allowing unregulated businesses to operate in back yards of residential neighbors citywide from 6am until 11pm with neither parking nor lighting restrictions, not to mention the car and pedestrian traffic rolling through said neighborhoods at all hours seven days a week.
Where would these customers of the neighborhood pop up businesses park? In the street? On the lawn? Or just drive by a pick-up window from 6am to 11pm seven days a week? With no required minimum parking, customers would just mill around the business on foot or driving by, clogging up streets and creating congestion for fire and police.
The proposed text changes will put the safety and comfort of our communities at risk by bypassing all restrictions and neighborhood protections by allowing unregulated businesses and unwanted traffic, congestion, and visitors to enter our neighborhoods from 6am -11pm every day/night.
I did not purchase a home next to a gym, nail salon, sweepstakes parlor, burger joint, manufacturing plant, clock shop, or art studio because I wanted to live in a bedroom community, not a strip mall.
I would like to see more input allowed by homeowners for upcoming developments so that we can protect our biggest and most important investment, our homes. We also want to ensure the safety of our families by controlling the areas surrounding our homes.
There would be very little regulation of these neighborhood pop up businesses because the neighborhoods were not set up for pop up businesses and homeowners would flee these areas, creating blighted areas, reducing tax revenue, all because of text changes stripping neighborhoods of their community feel and purpose.
Please reconsider the impact these text changes will have on the neighborhoods we live in. Think what it would be like to live next to a burger joint or sweepstakes parlor in your neighborhood.