Mooresville torpedoes plans for 550 Lake Norman homes on congested highway
The Mooresville Planning Board has unanimously rejected plans by three major developers for a total of 550 homes along one of the Charlotte region’s worst congested highways.
The projects are “unreasonable” and out of line with less crowded nearby developments, board members said in identical motions that recommended rezonings for the projects be denied by the Mooresville Board of Commissioners.
The commissioners, who have final say, will consider the rezonings at a meeting to be announced.
“The biggest challenge we’ll have is going to be navigating N.C. 150,” board member Jeremy Katz said on Tuesday, June 23, before making a motion to recommend rejecting up to 99 townhomes by Maryland-based Caruso Homes. The development would be on 19.35 acres at 825 River Highway (N.C. 150 West) and have only right-in, right-out access, according to the developer’s plans.
N.C. 150 is known for its notorious, decades-old backups from Interstate 77 exit 36 west several miles to the lake, especially during the morning and afternoon commutes, in both directions.
The board also recommended torpedoing Georgia-based Davis Development’s up to 261 multifamily homes and a community of as many as 190 attached homes, called Parc at Lake Norman, by Charlotte-based Prestige Homes.
Resident cites road, school crowding concerns
Resident Kacey Pope urged the board to recommend denying the rezonings, and no residents spoke in favor of the projects.
“Over the last few years, this town has invested significant time, expert input and resident feedback” into its thoroughfare plan, Pope said. “The applications do not exist in a vacuum. They all add pressure to the same stretch of 150, the same school system and the same housing market.”
N.C. 150 is being expanded under a $249 million project that will see 10 lanes at a revamped I-77 exit 36 and additional lanes into Catawba County on the lake.
Pope said the widening is meant “to address yesterday’s problems, not tomorrow’s.”
“The same is true for our schools,” she said, noting how Lake Norman High School, on Doolie Road off N.C. 150 near the lake, “is already near capacity.”
Iredell-Statesville Schools is building Weathers Creek High in nearby Troutman for $130 million “to relieve pressure” on crowding, and elementary schools that feed into Lake Norman High “are already closed to out-of-district transfers,” she said.
The proposed developments “would add hundreds of families to a school system that is already trying to catch up,” Pope said.
And she said housing communities within three miles of the projects have an overall vacancy rate of 13%.
Under questioning by the Planning Board, a representative of one of the developers said the vacancy rate is 10% at the company’s existing development off N.C. 150.
Emergency response times
Safety is another concern, Planning Board members said.
Asked by the board about expected emergency response times to the proposed Caruso Homes development when N.C. 150 is expanded, Mooresville Fire Chief Shane LaCount said “it’s going to add additional time.”
He was referring to one direction of travel that would require emergency and other vehicles to enter a planned U-turn lane to loop back to the development.
N.C. 150 is expected to be widened by 2030, state highway officials have said.
Need for a cut-through road
Pitches by the developers regarding the quality of their planned homes didn’t sway the board.
“Our goal with any of our projects, especially when we’re developing near one of our other ones, is always to exceed what we’ve done before with Class A quality,” a representative of the planned 30-acre Davis Development project at 833 River Highway told the board.
Davis Development built the Parian Mooresville luxury apartments located across from its latest planned development.
Before voting against the project, board member Laura Temple said the proposal packed too many homes on the site.
Before voting against the 30.7-acre Parc at Lake Norman project, Katz complimented the developer for proposing another way to funnel traffic from the property other than N.C. 150. The developer ditched the alternative after 70 neighbors in the nearby Morrison Plantation subdivision protested.
“I thank you so much for working towards interconnectivity,” Katz told the development team. “And I’m actually a little disappointed in my friends in Morrison Plantation for not having the wider thought process of understanding the safety aspects of getting people through town, getting traffic off of 150.”
Plans for cut-through roads off N.C. 150 have failed for decades.
In 2012, opposition by neighbors, including NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, sunk Mooresville’s longtime plans to alleviate chronic N.C. 150 traffic tie-ups by building a bridge across a Lake Norman cove.
The bridge would have spanned Morrison Cove in the McCrary Creek section of the lake. It would have linked Doolie and Oak Tree roads, providing quicker access from N.C. 150 West to Brawley School Road and Interstate 77’s impending Exit 35.