Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010

Apex, developer whittle the details

A joint meeting of the Apex planning board and town council at a work session last week showed that Veridea developer Tom Hendrickson and his team - and the town, for that matter - have come a long way in their negotiations over how the massive project will be built.

Hendrickson, the principal of Lookout Ventures, has proposed a 1,015-acre development that, if realized, could double the tax base of the town.

If it's completed as Hendrickson has planned, Veridea would one day contain 10 million square feet of offices, 3.5 million square feet of shops, 2 million square feet of manufacturing space and 8,000 homes.

Last week's meeting was the third of at least four planned work sessions to allow Apex planning board and town council members to hear and discuss a shrinking list of concerns about the Veridea project.

Officials said a running list of more than 300 concerns - areas of disagreement between the town and the developer - have been whittled down to a few dozen.

"What you all see here is the distillation of an awful, awful lot of work that we've done and staff has done," Hendrickson said, referring to a roughly 150-page binder containing information on the Veridea discussions.

"When you see things that seem simple here, it's because of a lot of that hard work," he added.

Prior meetings have addressed the developer's overall development plans and how Hendrickson's group will manage the construction process.

This time, the group tackled lingering concerns about streets, traffic and transportation infrastructure as well as Veridea's wastewater management plan.

Among the highlights of the work session:

Town officials and Hendrickson's team discussed whether Apex should allow the developer to build private alleys behind and between some buildings.

The town's planning staff says that the proposed 12-foot alleys, which Hendrickson's group is calling "rear lanes," would be too narrow for garbage trucks and emergency vehicles to navigate.

Kent Jackson, director of engineering for Apex, said his staff also worried that residents living in Veridea would be held responsible by their community homeowner's association to pick up the cost of maintaining the private lanes.

"We're not supportive of private alleys being maintained by a small neighborhood or a row of townhomes," Jackson said.

Hendrickson said that the alleys would not be intended for cars.

Rather, he said the narrow lanes would serve pedestrians and would help to "create a sense of place" within Veridea.

The developer said maintenance of the alleys would be handled through a special fund maintained by the Veridea homeowner's association.

Plans for a regional rail service in the Triangle could have a significant impact on the future of Veridea.

The town might place a cap on the size of the development.

A proposed cap would prevent Veridea from growing beyond 85 percent of current projections, unless the town sees a regional fixed rail line crossing U.S. 1 that would serve the development.

Diane Khin, Apex's planning director, said on Thursday that the condition is based on a traffic impact analysis performed by the engineering and land planning firm Kimley-Horn and Associates.

She said the analysis found that as many as 20 percent of residents in a fully-developed Veridea - one with access to rail service - might live and work within the development.

That number is reduced to 5 percent for future residents who would otherwise have to rely on buses, vanpools or other forms of transportation to get from Point A to Point B.

"[The analysis] tries to back up the effects the rail would have," Khin said. "It would allow more development in the area because people could choose to use the rail."

Hendrickson said he would not fight the requirement, should the town choose to approve it.