Research, industry project proposed for Orange County’s stalled Settler’s Point site
Update: The story was corrected at 6:08 p.m. Sept. 8, 2020, to clarify Hillsborough’s role in providing the site with water and sewer service and if annexation could be part of that discussion.
A new proposal could bring 2.4 million square feet of industrial, warehouse or research space to the corner of Interstate 40 and Old N.C. 86 near Hillsborough, and thousands of cars and trucks to a nearby neighborhood.
The project on the 161-acre site would be twice the size of The Streets at Southpoint mall and shopping center, which sits on 140 acres.
Davis Road neighbors and their supporters say the plan for Research Triangle Logistics Park is alarming. They turned out by the dozens in August for two Orange County Planning Board meetings and a rally in downtown Hillsborough and have created a website — SaveHillsborough.com — to share information.
On Aug. 19, the Planning Board voted 6-4 to recommend the Orange County Board of Commissioners approve the RTLP project. The commissioners, who heard from about 30 opponents at a meeting last week, will hold a public hearing for the conditional zoning request and master development plan on Sept. 15.
The meeting will be held virtually because of COVID-19 limits on gathering, but the public can comment online or by phone. Email comments also will be accepted after the meeting.
Terra Equity Inc., a division of Louisville, Kentucky-based Barrister Commercial Group, wants to build RTLP southeast of the Old N.C. 86 and I-40 interchange. The site is about a mile south of UNC Hospitals’ Hillsborough campus and the Waterstone neighborhood.
RTLP plans show four buildings up to 60 feet tall, potentially serving health technology and scientific research, to logistics supply operations, warehouse and supply chain companies, and advanced and light manufacturing.
The project is valued at $150 million and could generate 1,000 to 1,500 jobs, company officials have said.
Roughly 148 acres were rezoned in 2018 for the 1.2 million-square-foot Settler’s Point research and industry campus, which has stalled. RTLP is twice as big and would be more densely developed, with only half of the 100-foot landscaping that was to buffer Settler’s Point from surrounding homes.
RTLP’s developer also is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reduce the size of a 100-year floodplain that cuts through the site, county documents show.
Traffic on Davis Road
Noise, lights, water quality and wildlife protection are concerns, but opponents’ biggest issue by far is the traffic planned for Davis Road, where neighbors now enjoy riding bikes and going for walks.
Most RTLP traffic would enter the site via the Service Road off Old N.C. 86, less than 500 feet from the I-40 East off-ramp, but the N.C. Department of Transportation won’t let drivers turn left out of the Service Road toward I-40 or Hillsborough.
That means roughly 1,700 cars, trucks and tractor-trailers — about 90% of the 3,648 estimated trips that RTLP could generate — would exit onto Davis Road each day, a traffic study showed. The new driveway would be roughly 1,000 feet from a traffic light planned for the Davis Road-Old N.C. 86 intersection. It would pass within 50 feet of one home and a few hundred feet of others.
The nearly 59% increase in daily traffic could be spread across 24 hours, with the heaviest use — over 300 vehicles an hour entering and exiting the site — during the morning and evening commutes, project officials said.
RTLP also would add a six-story, 300,000-square-foot building to Davis Road that would dwarf the house next door and the one-story, roughly 10,000-square-foot Hillsborough United Church of Christ across the street.
The RTLP plan is “really unacceptable,” resident Clare Brennan told the Planning Board.
“In this COVID environment, Davis Road has really become a place that our neighbors cherish,” Brennan said. “We cycle out there now, we walk out there. You see families walking hand-in-hand with children on Davis Road, especially because people are home now and not able to go out and socialize.”
Wildlife, environmental concerns
The proposed project buffers are too small, and lights, noise and other pollutants from the project could affect wildlife, water quality and critical natural areas, Jessica Sheffield, executive director of the Eno River Association, told The News & Observer in an interview.
In letter to association supporters, Sheffield noted a headwaters tributary for the Eno River on the site and six acres of a state Natural Heritage Area. Cates Creek, “a nutrient sensitive waterway,” she said, flows along the eastern border.
A 2004 inventory of the county’s Natural Heritage areas describes the Cates Creek Hardwood Forest as “one of the best examples in the state of a rare plant community: the Basic Oak-Hickory Forest.”
The project raises concerns for several rare freshwater mussels and fish, including the Notched Rainbow and the Triangle Floater, as well as the Eno-New Hope corridor, a wildlife “land bridge” connecting Orange, Durham, Chatham and Wake counties, Sheffield said.
Still, good development is possible, she said.
“This area is so hot for development — I’m dealing with it in Durham County, we’re dealing with it in Orange County — it’s not realistic to say areas shouldn’t be developed,” Sheffield said. “We know there will be developments. We know there will be impacts, but everybody needs to work together to minimize this.”
Commercial taxes, stormwater worries
The county has planned for commercial development at all four corners of I-40 and Old N.C. 86 since the 637-acre Hillsborough Economic Development District was created there in 1981. The county also has the Buckhorn and Eno districts to the west and east.
However, the 40-year effort to develop those districts has had only a little success. Meanwhile, the county is relying on homeowners’ property taxes to pay for roughly 80% of its annual expenses.
The commissioners could vote this fall on whether to add 89 acres to the Hillsborough district, expanding it to the edge of the rural buffer, roughly 37,000 acres around Chapel Hill and Carrboro where dense development and public utilities are banned.
A small part of the 12-acre lot on Davis Road lies in the rural buffer but won’t be developed. However, it would abut a parking lot.
The developer would like to start construction next year, but the timeline will depend on the tenants that lease or buy the space and the time it takes to get each building approved.
While the developer’s application focused on health care, research and weaknesses in the national supply chain for pharmaceuticals and COVID-19 equipment, Michael Birch, an attorney for the developer, said there are no specific tenants yet. That has heightened neighbors’ fear that the project will only bring massive warehouses and several hundred tractor-trailers a day, Hillsborough resident Gayane Chambless said.
The other big concern is stormwater, Chambless said. Flooding already affects her Cornwallis Hills neighborhood about a mile north of the RTLP site, she said. Cates Creek crosses the neighborhood’s southeastern boundary on its way north to the Eno River.
Last year, the tributary that starts south of Davis Road and runs through the RTLP site washed out part of the road, creating a sinkhole that forced neighbors to take alternate routes for over six months, said Myra Gwin-Summers, who lives near the RTLP site.
Neighbors nearby and downstream worry that buildings, parking lots and other impervious surfaces could heighten the flooding risk, Chambless and Gwin-Summers said.
“Since it is the top of the hill, some of that runoff would shoot down Davis Road to this same spot. The rest would shoot off the north side into the flood plain of the EDD (economic development district) where the 2,225,000 square foot buildings would be built,” Gwin-Summers said in an email. “All of it then flows into the creeks that become Cates Creek, flowing through, and potentially flooding Cornwallis Hills subdivision and others downstream.”
Public hearings, possible lawsuit
Terra Equity submitted its application to Orange County on June 6 as a conditional zoning, which allows the commissioners to negotiate with the developer over traffic, building size and other concerns.
If the commissioners approve the zoning and master plan, county staff then would review each building plan as it’s submitted to make sure it complies with the zoning. There would not be any public hearings.
The developer has not asked the town of Hillsborough to annex the site, but that could be part of a discussion with the Town Board about water and sewer service to the project, Planning Director and Assistant Town Manager Margaret Hauth clarified in an email Wednesday. There is no timeline for that conversation, she said.
Hundreds of residents contacted the commissioners in July and August — most to oppose the plan — and dozens more took their concerns to the Aug. 5 and Aug. 13 planning board meetings.
The plan for Settler’s Point faced a year of emails and contentious public hearings before it was approved. In addition to the research and light industry campus, it also was supposed to include restaurants, offices and a hotel on the east side of Old N.C. 86.
It was supposed to have two driveways on Old N.C. 86 and did not include the Davis Road parcel. RTLP doesn’t have the road frontage on Old N.C. 86 to have a second driveway there, Birch said.
Settler’s Point won’t be built if RTLP is approved, county planner Michael Harvey said. It’s not clear why Settler’s Point didn’t happen, but Hillsborough town officials had expressed concerns about the project’s retail portion. Developer Jim Parker did not return a call seeking more information about why Settler’s Point is not going to be built.
The properties are still privately owned.
The commissioners will consider whether to reverse the zoning decision allowing the office and retail portion of Settler’s Point on Sept. 15. The old zoning still would allow low-intensity offices, restaurants and hotels but no retail.
Meanwhile, Davis Road residents have threatened legal action to stop RTLP and have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money.
Franklin Garland, who lives behind the site off Ode Turner Road, said neighbors don’t understand why the county continues to push an outdated plan for economic development that no one wants. Davis Road has added hundreds of residents, small businesses and farms in the last 40 years, resident Ronald Sieber said, and many of them moved there without realizing the district existed.
“This community is not opposed to intelligent development that’s in sync that somehow aligns with some of the goals of this community, which is to have a nice place to live, a rural buffer,” Sieber said.
What’s next
The Orange County commissioners will hear about the RTLP project in a Sept. 15 public hearing, which will be held online. Details about how to watch the meeting and sign up to speak will be posted in mid-September. The commissioners also will accept email comments for 24 hours following the meeting.
Orange County planning and economic development officials have posted a document online — tinyurl.com/y6r4zhua — to answer questions about the project.
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 5:50 AM.
