M/I Homes to wait until January for Avery Park vote

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HUNTERSVILLE — M/I Homes announced that it will delay seeking final approval for its controversial Avery Park subdivision, just hours before the Columbus, Ohio-based homebuilder was scheduled to go before Huntersville‘s Board of Commissioners Monday night.

Tamara Lynch, vice president for sales and marketing of M/I Homes’ Charlotte office, declined on Monday to comment on the reasons for the delay. But she said that her company has decided to take the proposal to commissioners in mid-January.

Because of protests against the proposal, winning commissioners’ approval could be tough for M/I. In cases of protested rezoning requests, a supermajority of commissioners is required for approval, meaning that five of the six must back the project.

It is the second time that M/I has delayed presenting the proposal to commissioners in the weeks after protesters filed 184 protest letters against the original proposal for Avery Park and packed the galleries at an Oct. 1 public hearing about the plans for the subdivision.

Protesters’ primary concern centered on the proposed density of Avery Park, which would have had more homes per acre than surrounding housing developments.

Even though it won the approval of the town’s planning department at the Oct. 1 meeting, M/I radically altered its plans to appease protesters and presented a new plan to the town’s planning board Oct. 22. Despite more protests at that meeting, the planning board concurred with town planners, approving the altered subdivision plans and recommending that commissioners bless the rezoning at a meeting set for Nov. 5.

But M/I asked for a deferral of the Nov. 5 vote. At the time, Lynch said M/I wanted to make changes and further address concerns aired at the Oct. 22 planning board meeting.

M/I, one of the largest builders in Charlotte and nationally, had originally proposed a development of 110 homes on a 42-acre vacant tract on Gilead Road near Wynfield Creek Parkway. Under that plan, Avery Park’s density would have been higher than that of Wynfield, a neighboring, 1980s-era subdivision.

The revised plan, introduced Oct. 22 at a Huntersville Planning Board meeting, reduced the number of homes to 82, lowering the density from an average of 2.6 units per acre to 1.9, in response to what one of the protesters called the group’s “No. 1 concern.”

But it wasn’t enough for the opponents, who said at the Oct. 22 meeting that they acknowledged the changes but continued to cite the same problems laid out in the 184 protest letters and petitions.

The protests did no good; after a contentious, 90-minute meeting Oct. 22, the Planning Board, in a 7-2 vote, recommended approval of the Avery Park rezoning request.

The new plan also got rid of homes on narrow, 30-foot lots with alley-loaded garages and increased by fivefold the size of a forested buffer between Avery Park and Wynfield, from 30 feet — which was 10 feet wider than what the town required — to 150 feet, about half the length of a football field.

In other concessions, M/I moved a road to be farther away from a nearby historic property, effectively increasing a buffer, and added a pedestrian pathway to try to address traffic concerns.

Wynfield residents said that the new subdivision would adversely affect their home values. But M/I representative Bob Wiggins said after the Oct. 22 meeting that homes in Avery Park would sell for a base price of around $300,000 apiece, up from the original estimate of $270,000.

Tony Brown can be reached at [email protected], (704) 247-2912 or on Twitter at @tonymecktimes.