New Wake high school back on track after Apex reverses decision against site plan
A new Wake County high school will be built in Apex after town officials reversed their original decision to deny approval for the project.
Felton Grove High School is scheduled to open in 2025 as a 2,223-student school on 8550 Stephenson Road in Apex near the Briarwood Farms Mobile Home Park. The Apex Planning and Community Development Department approved the site plan in April — a year after the Town Council rejected the plan and led to the school system suing the town.
The project pits school leaders who say Felton Grove is needed to deal with overcrowding against the mobile home community that says the school will create traffic headaches.
“A new Wake County high school that is desperately needed to serve over two thousand students is not being built because a single person (the owner of the mobile home park ) with no experience as a traffic engineer gave an opinion that is stated in the findings of fact to support the conclusions of law,” the school district wrote in the lawsuit against Apex.
For now, school leaders say they plan to dismiss the lawsuits they filed against Apex and the owner of the mobile home park.
Crowded Apex schools
The school board purchased the site in southeast Apex near Sunset Lake in 2016. The school is named after a historically African American residential community about two miles west of the unincorporated community of Feltonville.
Felton Grove would help relieve overcrowding at several high schools, such as Apex High and Apex Friendship High.
Wake submitted its site plan to Apex in April 2020. It drew the concerns of the owner and tenants of Briarwood Farms because students would need to travel through the mobile home park to get to the school.
“We all want schools,” Mark Cumalander, the owner of Briarwood Farms, said in an interview Friday. “We all want roads. You’ve got to weigh the costs, the benefits and the impact on this underprivileged community, and I just don’t think they’ve done that.”
In April 2021, the Apex Town Council held a quasi-judicial hearing on the site plan where Cumalander and some tenants spoke against the project.
The Town Council cited Cumalander’s testimony in the findings of fact it issued after rejecting the site plan. In its lawsuit, the school district said the council violated state law by allowing this lay testimony.
Apex reverses decision on site plan
Last year, Apex changed its requirements so that major site plan approvals no longer required council approval. Amanda Bunce, the town’s planning manager, says administrative staff approve site plans if they meet all requirements of the town’s unified development ordinance.
The town’s Technical Review Committee approved the site plan on April 13.
“As long as all the standards of the UDO are met, we have to approve it,” Bunce said in an interview Friday.
Lisa Luten, a Wake school spokeswoman, said the district is making concessions to try to address the concerns of the mobile home community. Superintendent Cathy Moore was among the district officials who’ve met with the residents.
Luten said they’re adding a traffic light, turn lanes, speed humps and sidewalks. She said they’’ll also seek Cumalander’s approval to add a playground in the mobile home park so the children don’t have to play on the streets.
Cumalander said he’d be receptive to the playground idea. But he was still skeptical of how much can be done to to address the traffic impact.
“The bottom line is that this has an impact on affordable housing,” Cumalander said. “That’s the problem here. That’s the rub. You’re doing stuff that’s affecting affordable housing.”
