By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com
Two years after narrowly approving its annexation and initial zoning designation, Sanford’s City Council has given approval to the layout of the first of seven construction phases in the Brookshire subdivision to be located off Highway 421 Business north of the city.
Phase One on the 167.91-acre site would include the building of 391 single-family homes on lots having a minimum size of 6,000 square feet, along with the supporting infrastructure of water, sewer, storm drainage, and 23,000 linear feet of new streets that will be maintained by the city.
Brookshire, owned by Pinnacle Partners LLC, will be bordered by Valley and Forestwood Park roads, and U.S. Highway 421 Business (or Boone Trail Road), just north of the Wildwood subdivision. An additional 23-acre portion of land on the site will be used for multi-family housing, and still another five and a half acres is to be reserved for commercial development. Almost 27 acres, or 16 percent of the total area, will be preserved as open space.
The land was zoned in November of 2021 as the Brookshire Conditional Zoning District, a stand-alone designation that has its own unique requirements and conditions. In exchange for greater liberty within Sanford and Lee County’s Unified Development Ordinance, Pinnacle Partners is required to obtain approval from the city at every major phase of development to the site before moving forward with the next.
The council voted to annex the property into the city at a meeting in October of 2021. But a group of adjoining property owners appeared that night to voice their grievances over what they considered the developer’s lack of specifics on how the development would be constructed and perceptions that Pinnacle’s plan violated provisions of Plan SanLee.
That delayed assigning the conditional zoning designation to the property until the following month, and the developers have been working with the city since then to produce the plat for the first phase of the project that was approved on October 3 of this year.
Other approvals
Two other significant projects got their final approvals from the council earlier this month. The first was a plan from Drafting and Design Services, Inc. to redevelop a 10.31-acre tract known as Craig’s Mobile Home Park at 201 McNeill Road into a campground and RV park. The plan will create 54 RV campsites, each having space for parking two motor vehicles. Construction is expected to take up to eight months once it begins.
The council also gave the go-ahead to the rezoning of a 13.18-acre tract from General Commercial to The Townes at Westlake Conditional Zoning District, where an 80-unit townhome subdivision will be constructed at the southwest corner of the intersection of U.S. 421 Business (North Horner Boulevard) and Wilkins Drive.
All units will have a parking garage big enough for at least one vehicle, and a separate guest parking lot having 12 spaces has been incorporated into the project’s design. The site is currently a vacant lot.
It would be nice to have more grocery stores and restaurants to feed all the people in all these new housing developments.