Cornelius land-use plan decision delayed again

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CORNELIUS – The Bailey-Mayes roads area has developed into a real development sore spot.

The dilemma posed by growth in the small chunk of east Cornelius for the third time held up passage of a new proposed land-use plan when a new Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Dec. 16 to again kick a decision forward.

Bailey Road, once a rural dead-end and now an increasingly busy connector street with several existing subdivisions, is populated with two disparate and diametrically opposed longtime owners of large tracts of land.

One small but consistently vocal group – led by the indefatigable Bailey Road denizen Joan Boon, who has shown up at every recent town board meeting to speak her piece about the area – wants to keep residential development in the area down to the current one house per 5 acres because that’s why they moved to the area to begin with.

The other, which for the past two meetings have rallied under the leadership of former Cornelius Mayor Gary Knox, say they can’t sell their land – which has appreciated astronomically in tax value due to development along Lake Norman. With them, they have brought developers who say they don’t want tracts on which they can’t put enough lots to make it worth their time or money.

Knox, a real estate agent who has characterized the current rural preservation designation of the area as a “a condemnation,”
and his troops aver that nearby development has made the area more urban, including two public schools, Bailey Middle and Hough High; Charlotte Mecklenburg Utilities Department infrastructure; and a town park.

Boon reiterated at Monday’s meeting that she wants to preserve what’s left the area’s “rural character.” While the commissioners and she joked that her flood of emails and continued presence at meetings have made her iconic in her stance, she has been outnumbered by density proponents at the past two meetings.

In the middle of the tussle stand Cornelius Planning Director Wayne Herron and the commissioners.

Herron has spent months with residents and a consultant crafting the new land-use plan, which he has repeatedly defended as a long-range planning document and not a new zoning ordinance, and has tweaked the plan several times in response to the town’s Planning Board members and commissioners’ concerns.

Commissioner David Gilroy, who has opposed high-density development, on Monday reiterated his earlier characterization of the dilemma as an “irreconcilability.” Herron responded that his latest tweaks – changing the area’s proposed new planning designation of “low-density rural” to one house per 3 acres from the earlier proposal of one house per 2 acres – “are not perfect, but the best we could do” to try to placate both sides of the issue.

That was enough for veteran commissioners Gilroy, and apartment developer John Bradford, as well as newcomer Woody Washam – who said he has spent hours studying the plan – to say they were ready to OK it.

“It is as good as we’re going to get,” Gilroy said.

But the three wound up voting in favor of deferring the plan until January – the board will not hold its regularly scheduled Dec. 30 meeting because of the holidays – in response to requests for more time from new commissioners Jim Duke and Thurman Ross Jr.

Former commissioner-turned-new Mayor Chuck Travis said he was pleased by that.

After the meeting, Herron said he heard no suggestions from the board for further tweaks, but that he will take any new public input he receives into account before he presents the plan to the board again on Jan. 13.

“If the commissioners have an epiphany, maybe at that point they’ll be ready to pass it,” Herron said.