Issues versus Current Zoning

2006 zoning plan approved for senior apartments

The developers note up front that their proposal differs from the current Conditional Use Zoning in several ways that have to be addressed by actions of officials before the property can be rezoned.

• The property recently given to the City is smaller than that required under the 2006 rezoning.  In 2006 28.75 acres were to be donated to the City including all of the flood plain, while now the owners of the parcel are asking for 27 acres to suffice.
• The 1988 agreement for a right-of-way dedication along the entire length of the southside parcel along Franklin Boulevard would have to be declared resolved through the December 2014 donation of land around the parcel to the City.
• An updated agreement will need to outline the continuing obligations of all parties in the 1988 agreement related to the required road widening improvements along Franklin Boulevard.

But neighbors have additional concerns about the particulars of this plan.

1. Contra Agreement, Contra Plan. The 2006 rezoning was a negotiated agreement that took in the interests of all parties.  Not everyone got what they wished, but all needs were listened to.  The suddenness of this deal, the expected quid pro quo on the encircling floodplain when coupled with a disregard for the rest of the 2006 agreement and ten years of planning on a greenway, has the feel of contract zoning.  At the very least the process shows a strong-arm and unhealthy approach toward neighborhoods and zoning-controlled development.  The spartan particulars of this request ignore decades of planning department counsel on amenable development.

Front view of 2006 proposed senior apartments

2. Noise and Lighting Issues.  In 2006, with the property zoned for senior apartments with plentiful tree buffers, noise and light abatements were much less needed than with a more intense commercial use.  The current proposal intrudes about as "in your face" design to neighbors as it could.  Along its most prominent southernmost point, there is minimum vegetation screening near a detention basin of a size designed for an unnamed-year storm.  An unsightly retaining wall will hold up infill dirt that will raise the parking lot at the back of the parcel level with Franklin Boulevard, but also make it considerably higher - twelve foot - than the existing lay of the land near the creek.  The wall will keep the central high ground in the floodplain from its current role as a natural sponge for floodplain waters and its height will force lights and noise and traffic pollution higher into neighbor properties view.   Necessary extensive and high evergreen screening is not offered to mitigate this intrusion.

3.  Traffic.  The Gaston Gazette reported last fall that the cities of Gastonia and Lowell and NCDOT are paying $125,000 for a study by Kimley Horn Associates to improve traffic along the I-85 and Franklin corridors.  It notes that the Lineberger family is also contributing $5000 to the the cost of the study, as the potential development of their properties will both put additional stress on the Franklin Corridor and derive substantial economic benefit from it.  Why do anything before this study is complete?  Must decision-makers decide first, and plan later?  Judging from the current traffic jams along the Franklin Corridor and failure to provide adequately for traffic volume and pedestrian and cyclist safety in the area, that may already be the norm.  Congestion is a price of growth sometimes, but when it trumps area liveability, the tax base that growth is supposed to generate ultimately suffers. You can add your opinions to their study by the completing the survey here - but note that they DO NOT mention that the Lineberger Family helped fund the survey, and have no info about the planned commercial development of this parcel or lands north of I-85.  The options to choose from have limited details and may open up our neighborhood to further intrusion and traffic. Use the comment boxes to tell them no to this rezoning and to preserve neighborhoods with smarter sustainable growth.

Duharts Creek drains from just west of Eastridge Mall down to the South Fork of the Catawba at Cramerton (map courtesy of the US Geological Survey's The National Map website)

4. Flooding and Environmental Quality Issues. The detention pond at the south of the proposed development is only designed to handle runoff from the new development's paved area.  When Franklin Square was originally built, runoff from the large area of parking and buildings was piped under Franklin Boulevard and emptied just beyond the street around this parcel. If this area is developed, how will that runoff water be affected?  The development will certainly affect the ability of the existing parcel to function as it should to mitigate stormwater drainage made worse by nearly thirty years of infill development upstream - and if newly and controversially rezoned properties along Glenwood Drive get developed along the D-7 tributary, add that runoff to Duharts Creek capacity here.

Panel 3565 of FEMA's Flood Insurance Mapping Program showing Duharts Creek and its tributaries feeding into the southside parcel floodplain (from the North Carolina Flood Mapping Program website)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's Floodplain Management Program has a bare minimum flood ordinance requirement so that small communities can adopt the ordinance and participate in its insurance:  construction must result in no rise in the base flood elevation (the "100 year storm" line).  But that outlier standard masks considerable changes that floodpain infill brings in the frequency and severity of flooding from less rare flooding events. Hence, FEMA encourages the adoption of stronger ordinances limiting floodplain infill as communities grow. Wake County does not allow any fill in the floodplain. Charlotte has restricted building in local floodplains, requiring special permits for any exception since 1994, and has a voluntary buy-back program for properties built in floodplains before regulation to return those areas to a more natural state.  In 2000 Charlotte became the first community in the country to use not just FEMA flood maps of past flooding but also community-generated maps predicting future flood-prone areas based on expected development changes upstream.

1992 FEMA Letter to City chastizing it for violating their own floodplain infill regulations.

Gastonia used to have a stronger ordinance that did not allow fill.  When Franklin Square was expanded in the early 1990s, over eight acres of illegal infill occurred along Tributary D-3 which drains the Lineberger lands north of I-85 and runs under the current Lowe's location. In response to a formal letter of complaint by FEMA to the City, City Council quietly passed a change in its Ordinances allowing infill.

Target construction and Duharts Creek realignment from the Stewart Perry Company's website

The fact is, development in floodplains always has consequences downstream, which is why such development should be tightly regulated. When the Target store was added to the back of the old Gaston Mall site in the late 2000s, greatly disrupting the existing Duharts Creek basin, there was certainly yeoman effort made to "make it work" by attempting a meandering stream recreation, using floodplain plantings, bioretention ponds, and Enkamat retention matting.  Even so, the project generated a substantial amount of soil runoff, so much so that the Catawba Riverkeeper organization, an environmental watchdog group, complained that where Duharts Creek entered Lake Wylie, water depths had now rapidly decreased.

Redesign of the upper reaches of Duharts Creek near the current Target (courtesy Catawba Riverkeeper website)

Carolina Wetland Services (CWS) probably did as good a job as they could mitigating the "unavoidable" consequences of the dramatic stream alteration - nearly 2000 linear feet of Duharts Creek stream bank relocation and 660 feet of piping and infill over Tributary D-8, infilling nearly an acre of wetlands.  On a visit there in late June, I noticed a blue heron searching for food among the lilypads in one of the ponds behind the Target store. But CWS's own report to the State's Division of Water Resources notes that Duharts Creek and its tributary there were a "non-supporting" stream system, meaning the streams are highly disturbed and do not support the expected life for such streams. 

From the CWS report to DWS on Gaston Mall Redevelopment

"Phase II" stormwater runoff water requirements began in the City in 2008, and all new development over one acre, including this parcel and the 300 acres of Lineberger property upstream, will have to meet Phase II standards for "best management practices (BMP)" in on-site handling of stormwater.  The goal is that post-construction stormwater will be not only controlled to pre-construction levels, but that run-off water leaving the site must also be of a certain required quality in regards to clarity, turbidity of suspended solids and nitrogen content. Included in those regulations is a requirement that all stormwater "BMPs" be maintained and inspected annually. Is there sufficient attention made in the inspection of the effectiveness of those BMPs?  Given the overgrowth along the Duharts Creek relocation, the most prominent "BMP" in the City, I just do not know.

View of the Duharts Creek relocation looking across to Target from where it enters a culvert under the old Gaston Mall site (own photo, July 2, 2015)

In a summer which has seen the third sequel to the movie "Jurassic Park," perhaps the key moral question of the original story, and this development push, has been lost.  Folks there were, in the words of a doubting Ian Malcolm, "so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."  Given that the very maps used to determine the location of the 100-year floodplain are faulty next to this parcel (see the next blog entry), perhaps a pause to consider the flooding consequences of this particular development is due.

Yes, that Ian Malcolm from the Jurassic Park movie.