Council approves southeast Durham townhomes despite some environmental concerns
Construction of up to 100 townhomes will proceed in southeast Durham, despite some council members and residents’ environmental concerns about the development.
In two votes Monday, the Durham City Council approved annexing and rezoning 13.22 acres of land off Sherron Road for development by M/I Homes, a company based in Ohio.
The annexation vote was 4-3 with the rezoning vote 5-2.
Some community members said they are worried about resulting environmental harms. Council members Chelsea Cook, Nate Baker and DeDreana Freeman shared that concern, voting against the measure.
Mayor Leonardo Williams and council members Mark-Anthony Middleton, Javiera Caballero and Carl Rist voted in favor.
Currently, the annexed land is mostly clear — a single house sits on it. Developers are building single-family homes in most of the surrounding areas. Only one area adjacent to the annexed parcel isn’t within Durham city limits.
The developers plan to keep most existing trees and plant some new ones, amounting to 20.5% tree cover on the property, said attorney Nil Ghosh, who represented the developers.
And, 5% of the units built will be kept affordable at 80% of area median income for 30 years, instead of the developers donating $120,000 to the city’s affordable housing fund.
“It provides much needed housing — affordable housing,” Ghosh said. “It also provides housing variety in this region.”
Concern about water supply
But a group of southeast Durham residents from Preserve Rural Durham said they have concerns about construction damaging regional drinking water supplies — namely at Lick Creek.
The Sherron Road development is less than half a mile uphill from the waterway, said Tammy Sawaya, a Preserve Rural Durham member. That means sediment from the blasting and mass grading could likely end up in Lick Creek, she said.
A September 2023 amendment to Durham’s sedimentation and erosion control rule is also not working, said Preserve Rural Durham member Pamela Andrews. She said sediment is rushing from Lick Creek into the Falls Lake watershed, which provides drinking water to Raleigh and Wake County.
“You want to get a big gulp of water out of there?” she said after the meeting, pointing to a picture of orange-brown water. “Absolutely not.”
Some speakers also said the area doesn’t have enough infrastructure to support new residential districts. They questioned if the closest police and fire stations have the staff to serve an influx of residents in the area.
The group asked the city council to fix these issues before approving new developments in southeast Durham. For the Sherron Road development specifically, the speakers also asked for 50-foot road buffers and other environmental protections.
Cook, the council member, echoed many residents’ concerns. She said the development proposal didn’t seem to follow the city comprehensive plan’s requirements for walkability, connectivity and housing diversity.
“We’re seeing this haphazard, one developer at a time — chunks small, chunks large, completely disoriented and chaotic,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a good legacy.”
Council members who supported the annexation said while they understood the residents’ environmental concerns, M/I Homes’ affordable housing offer was too important to pass up.
“Is it exactly what I want? No,” council member Caballero said. “Is it better than the other things around here? Yes.”
Other council members urged their colleagues to be “realistic” about expectations for new development. Middleton said the council’s job is to make sure developers meet expectations from Durham’s unified development ordinance.
“I need to write whatever standard I want into the UDO,” Middleton said. “Our minimum needs to be our maximum.”
Forcing developers to exceed those expectations isn’t within the limits of his job as council member, he said. The council can’t block a specific development because larger environmental protections are necessary, Middleton added
Baker, who voted against the annexation, said the Sherron Road annexation represents a pattern of unsustainable development that has pushed southeast Durham into “the Triangle’s greatest climate crisis.”
“It is simply corporate-driven sprawl,” he said.
This story was originally published August 7, 2024 at 5:55 AM.
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