Subdivision decision delayed until May

CORNELIUS –Courtyards at Nantz got held up in traffic Monday night at Cornelius Town Hall.

The Cornelius Planning Board tabled a proposed 63-unit single-family age-restricted subdivision after representatives of developer Epcon Communities balked at the town planning department’s requirement that Epcon pay for public street improvements imposed by the N.C. Department of Transportation.

“We love working in Cornelius and we understand that we are building in an area with traffic issues that little or nothing has been done about for years,” Phil Fankhauser, a principal partner in the Columbus-based development company, said after the meeting.

“But it is very unfair to put the burden totally on the first person to come along in a long time who wants to do something there.”

The development, which would include some commercial components in addition to the patio homes designed for buyers aged 55 and older, would occupy 21 acres along Nantz Road just south of West Catawba Avenue, a major thoroughfare.

The mandatory N.C. DOT improvements include changing the angle at which the two roads intersect from 60 degrees to 90, adding a right-turn lane from West Catawba onto Nantz Road and another turn lane from Nantz to West Catawba, said Wayne Herron, town planning director.

“The entrance to the development itself, from Nantz Road, would not require conditions,” Herron said, adding that the development is fairly small and that age-restricted communities generate fewer daily and peak-hours car travel than typical single family residential subdivisions.

Fankhauser and Gary Knox, a real estate broker and former Cornelius mayor who is acting as an agent for Epcon, asked the board to table the proposal until May so that the developer could try to find a way to spread some of the costs around. Knox said he did not know how much the proposed work would cost.

“It is our hope to create a partnering relationship between ourselves, state, local government, and perhaps even other property owners and developers to create an equitable situation,” Fankhauser said.

Courtyards at Nantz would be one of the latest in a series of nearly a dozen age-restricted Epcon subdivisions in various phases of planning, development and construction in the Charlotte market, including one approved in Cornelius last year.

For more on the Courtyards at Nantz proposal, go to cornelius.org, click on Your Government, and follow the links to Departments, Planning & Zoning and Projects.