About 100 people were at Hopewell Baptist Church on Davidson-Concord Road Thursday night for the first in a planned series of public planning workshops to help prepare for growth in an area east of town along N.C. 73 and Davidson-Concord Road.
The meeting included planning officials from Davidson, Huntersville and Cornelius. The three towns are collaborating – with the help of consultants – on drawing up a new land use and transportation plan for the area.
In July, Davidson approved a 1-year moratorium on new construction in unincorporated areas east of town, where landowners and developers are eager to move forward with a variety of projects. Davidson officials adopted the moratorium in July to give the town time to solicit residents’ ideas and concerns and undertake a comprehensive plan for the area. More info on the town website.
Planning Director Kris Krider estimated that about half the participants at Thursday night’s meeting were Davidson residents, with the remainder evenly divided among Cornelius and Huntersville residents. “The idea was to introduce the project and introduce the consulting team,” he said.
The lead consultant is Ayers/Saint/Gross of Washington, D.C., which is getting technical support from transportation consultants Martin Alexiou Bryson and economic analysts ZHA & Associates, according to Mr. Krider.
After the consultants described their planning philosophy, participants broke into groups, which Mr. Krider said “had a number of spirited discussions about concerns, quality of life, opportunities, and … traffic and growth, and schools.”
The town planners and consultants now will take feedback, concerns and ideas from the session and translate that into goals for the planning study. “The next step will be getting our stakeholder group together to vet those issues and establish some goals,” Mr. Krider said.
Those discussions are expected to take place before Thanksgiving, he said. Then the planning team will convene another public meeting, probably in the second week of December, “present those goals and some of their initial concept ideas” for the area. Future public meetings are planned in early 2008.
For more information about the N.C. 73/Davidson-Concord Road planning process, contact Davidson planner Lauren Blackburn, 704-892-7592 or lblackburn@ci.davidson.nc.us.
LINKS
Town of Davidson website information on the NC 73 plan
Ayers/Saint/Gross, of Washington, D.C., home page.
