Developer knocks town staff on rezoning advice. Hearing on town board’s Monday agenda
April 12. By Dave Vieser. Gary Cangelosi, a well-known local developer, has written a 10-page letter to the Cornelius Town Board taking issue with the town’s staff recommendations to reject a proposal to build 40 attached, age-restricted homes on West Catawba Avenue across from Elevation Church. The rezoning request, which has placed the town planning board in the unusual position of rejecting its own staff’s recommendations, lands on the desks of the Town Board Monday April 18 for a 7 pm public hearing.
CANGELOSI
The controversy focuses on a 9.3 acre site currently occupied by four private homes separated by vacant land. At stake will be the direction the town wishes to take in developing the remaining available properties along the West Catawba Avenue corridor.
Cangelosi was the developer of Kenton Place, across West Catawba from the site in question.
The proposal by Classica Homes for single-family active adult homes has the support of many local residents, as well as the Planning Board itself, which voted 3-2 in favor of Classica’s plan. The town’s planning staff, though, says it is not consistent with the previously adopted Cornelius land use plan.
“The Land Use Plan adopted by the Town Board in 2014 designates this property as Waterfront Mixed Use,” said Wayne Herron, town planning director. “This classification was intended to provide the opportunity to bring a mix of highly active uses between West Catawba Avenue and Lake Norman. It’s our opinion that the proposed plan is not consistent with the land use plan in that it does not provide for or encourage any non-residential component along West Catawba Avenue.”
Developer Cangelosi takes strong exception to the planning staff’s recommendation. “Does the town really think they have the right to use their power of rezoning to force its private landowners to mothball their private property based on mere speculation by government officials that someday the land would have some greater commercial value to the town?” he asked in a letter dated April 11. (To read the full text, click here).
Local residents are lining up with Cangelosi. Bill Carter, secretary and treasurer of the adjacent Vineyard Point Yacht & Tennis Club, says the proposed single-family home development would be better than anything commercial. “We frequently have bumper-to-bumper cars in front of the 9-acre tract that Classica wants to develop. A 40-unit residential project will be much more tolerable than any commercial development with cars constantly pulling in and out.”
The hearing will take place at Cornelius Town Hall on Catawba Avenue starting at 7 pm.
Are you freaking kidding me?!?! More people that need to get the boot out of office! I am so tired of these morons ruining our beautiful community! Everyone needs to fight for this one. This developer has it exactly right. Now how do we get rid of Wayne Herron?
Heather: I beg to disagree regarding Wayne Herron. In my humble opinion, he’s the best we’ve had in his current position.
Then he needs to be screaming with us to FIX IUR FREAKIN ROADS before ANYTHING else is built. Nothing. ..no houses, no apts, no commercial should be allowed before Catawba is appropriately widened. And a freakin right turn on red at Sam Furr!!!
This property is surrounded by my neighborhood, Vineyard Point/Bordeaux. The people who own it has been trying to sell for about 15 years, commercial or residential! Drive by it and look…it looks worn down and a mess right now…Classica homes who did Robins park would make that track of land look gorgious. They are proposing on approx 40 units with 55 and older residence…this is the least that would affect our traffic compared to anything else. We don’t need any more commercial right now and there’s no reason to put commercial in the middle of a residential neighborhood…there’s plenty of room around town for this…let alone all the vacancy signs up and down Catawba now! We (and you wouldn’t either) want a parking lot, dumpsters and everything else that goes along with commerical in our back yard!
The last time this property had a contract it was going to be sold as commercial property. The adjoining neighborhoods swarmed town hall and had it stopped. How quickly we forget. Cornelius deemed the property a buffer zone for the surrounding neighborhoods. Now they want a Hotel. Everyone should do their best to stop this debacle.
The citizens showed up and spoke in favor of the Classica plan, the people MOST affected said yes. Our town officials still resist. They WILL resist a commercial plan, not fair to landowners or them.
The last contract we had on that property was commercial. The neighborhood’s stopped that. The Town of Cornelius dubbed the property a safe zone or buffer zone for the neighborhoods. So we have had to deal with that mess for years. We now have a workable plan, but Cornelius apparently does not care about the Neighborhood anymore and now wants what we worked hard to get years ago. Really unbelievable.