Commissioners overcome quorum concerns, approve 60-acre business park rezoning

SALISBURY — Despite concern as to whether the Rowan County Board of Commissioners would be able to achieve a quorum during the meeting on Monday, they were able to vote and approve a rezoning allowing a 60-acre business park in southwest Rowan County.

Between Mike Caskey being deployed to the Middle East, Judy Klusman being unable to attend due to a personal health issue and Craig Pierce coming down with an illness on Monday, Chairman Greg Edds said that the plan was for Pierce to attend the beginning of the meeting; vote on the agenda, consent agenda and to table the public hearings; and then be excused. However, Pierce said that he was willing to stay through the entire meeting, and so the agenda was not amended and the meeting continued with a quorum of three commissioners.

One of the requests that was to be presented but not voted on by the commissioners was from Sunwest Construction and concerning a property at the intersection of West N.C. Highway 152 and Wilkinson Road. There were three actions requested by Sunwest: for the property to be rezoned from Rural Agricultural to Commercial, Business, Industrial with a Conditional District; for a Special Non-Residential Intensity Allocation, allowing for the company to exceed the typically allowed built-upon area in the Coddle Creek Watershed; and for a Planned Development Subdivision, allowing for 30 ft. setbacks in the park instead of 50 feet.

Those three applications combined to potentially allow for a 33-lot, 60-acre business park on the property. Robert Lyons, owner of Sunwest Construction, said that the company landed in Rowan County because his son, former NASCAR driver Robby, moved up to the area for the racing industry. Robby Lyons worked in a commercial building across the street from the property and when he noticed the for sale sign go up, the two viewed it as the perfect opportunity to expand in an area they had enjoyed working in.

“It’s kind of a natural progression for us, Robby worked for me as a superintendent before he got up here and got to have some fun racing. Now it’s time for him to transition business-wise and I love the area. The people here are so friendly and the weather is great,” said Robert Lyons.

The property is surrounded by similar usage properties, including the Gateway, Performance and Horsepower commercial parks to the west of Sunwest’s property.

As part of the rezoning process, Sunwest was required to hire a transportation engineering firm to perform a Transportation Technical Memorandum, which showed that Sunwest currently projects to bring 350 employees and 2,045 daily trips to west N.C. Highway 152, which keeps the highway below its designed capacity. The firm, Kimley-Horn, did recommend that Sunwest add 100-foot left and right turn lanes along the highway, widening the asphalt turn radii on Wilkinson Road for tractor-trailer trucks. Those improvements are required as part of the subdivision process, said Senior Planner Shane Stewart.

The property includes stormwater retention ponds in the approximately 41-acre common space, which would also include off-site septic fields, stream and drainage features and screening areas and landscaping.

“One of the things we tried to include here was extra public safety for the watershed area by including stormwater ponds where they’re not normally needed for this type of development. We did that just to be sure that no individual owner would have anything there that they’re not supposed to have and being cleaned out by stormwater,” said Paul Carter, president of EastLake Engineering.

Robert Lyons said that the business park will be mostly aimed at companies surrounding the racing industry and that Sunwest plans to sell most of the lots but retain some as rentals so that Lyon’s family could have passive income. Sunwest already has 12 companies interested in purchasing a lot in the park, said Lyons, including a company that wants to relocate from Georgia and one who wants to consolidate two locations into one Rowan County location.

The SNIA would allow for each of the lots to exceed the maximum built upon requirements within the Coddle Creek Watershed, for a total of 61.4 acres requested, which was the largest request the planning department had ever received.

The planning department typically recommends that a maximum of two acres be taken out of the county’s available watershed acreage, but that the number can be exceeded with no upper limit if the increase in tax base or amount of jobs created was deemed worth the loss of extra space. As a result of that rule, Stewart said that planning staff recommended that a condition be implemented that would require minimum building sizes. The recommended minimum was 7,500 square feet or 10 percent of the lot size.

The final request was for the PDS, which would allow the lots inside the park to have 30-foot setbacks on the front of the property instead of the typical 50-foot. Stewart said that the reduced setbacks would all be facing internal roads inside the park.

Jeremy Carter, the attorney assisting with Sunwest’s request, also presented a draft property owners’ agreement, which he said was only considered a draft because it could not be filed until the requests were approved. Property owners would be required to sign the POA, which would include requirements such as the street-facing walls must be 70 percent stone or masonry, landscaping and maintenance guidelines and uniform signage.

“It’s going to be as upscale as I can make it so that we retain our values and it’s the kind of place that we want to be,” said Robert Lyons.

Planning staff also recommended substantial changes to the typical CBI allowed usages, including the elimination of usages such as greenhouses, pulp and paper mills, chemical products and farm materials. The staff also recommended the addition of rubber and miscellaneous plastic products and fabricated metal products, excluding ammunition and ordnance.

After the discussion, the commissioners voted unanimously to approve all three requests.

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