Mooresville slams Atlanta developer’s plan for hundreds of Lake Norman apartments
Calling the project a bad fit in a town overloaded with apartments, the Mooresville Board of Commissioners Monday night unanimously rejected an Atlanta developer’s plans for hundreds more of them off Interstate 77 Exit 31 in southern Iredell County.
Prestwick Development wanted to build 318 apartments in five four-story buildings and add commercial-retail space in a second phase of the mixed-use project.
The developer declined the request Monday night when commissioners asked the company to build the commercial and retail space at the same time as the apartments.
Mooresville designated the area around the exit as an employment center, meaning projects should include a mix of uses, Mayor Miles Atkins said.
The project, called Langtree Apartments, would have sprouted largely on the north side of two-lane Alcove Road, just north of the Langtree at the Lake mixed-use community.
The new development would have included 10,500 square feet of retail on the south side of Alcove Road, a representative of project consultant Urban Design Partners told the Mooresville Planning Board in October.
Monday night, Prestwick officials promised only to have their planned commercial-retail space completed when the fifth and final apartment building received its certificate of occupancy from the government.
They said the commissioners’ request Monday night was unexpected, the first time anyone had expressed such a request since Prestwick proposed the development in March.
In October, the Planning Board unanimously recommended that the town Board of Commissioners approve a rezoning for the project, but commissioners felt differently Monday night.
“We’ve got plenty of apartments,” commissioner Lisa Qualls, the board’s mayor pro tem, said before the board voted against a rezoning for the project. “I’m not sure what value this adds to the town of Mooresville, to have 300-some more apartments..
“You go on (two-lane) Alcove Road and it’s development, development, development, development,” Qualls said. “None of it goes together. It just doesn’t feel like orderly development to me.”
“This is high density,” commissioner Gary West said, adding that the project had no affordable-housing units. “We get hit with a lot of density. Expensive dirt drives high density, I get it, right?”
But 2,497 additional apartments in town either have been approved, are under construction or are about to receive certificates of occupancy, he said.
Yet the town “is held hostage” by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, he said, never knowing if the state will expand state roads along which the apartments are being built.
Prestwick officials told the Board of Commissioners Monday night that they’ve worked with the NCDOT for 11 months on entrances to their development.
“We’re willing to be flexible,” a Prestwick representative said. “We’re very excited about this development.”
His enthusiasm, however, didn’t spread to the elected officials he pitched the project to Monday night.
“It’s so disjointed,” Atkins said about the developer’s plan.