Most of the day Wednesday, May 20, the Greensboro City Council is holding seven virtual public hearings on rezoning issues, but don’t rush to comment because the City Council voted on those rezoning issues at the Tuesday, May 19 meeting.
However, if you should like to comment on one of the rezoning requests on the agenda for the Tuesday, May 19 meeting, by state law you have until sometime in the evening of Wednesday, May 20 to submit your written comment to virtualcomment@greensboro-nc.gov.
If there are comments, a second vote may be held when the City Council reconvenes the meeting Thursday, May 20 at 11 a.m.
The state statute governing virtual meetings requires the City Council to accept written public comments for 24 hours after the virtual public hearing is closed. The City Council chose to pass all four rezoning requests, before the written comment period closed. Rezoning requests often involve more than one vote and more than one public hearing.
The rezoning request for 2222 Wilcox Dr. by the Keystone Group was the most contentious and it passed by an unusual 7-2 vote with Councilmembers Justin Outling and Sharon Hightower voting no.
The request was for a rezoning from Residential Single-Family-3 (R-3) to Conditional District-Residential Single-Family-7 (R-7) with the condition limiting the number of houses on the 12.5 acre tract to 52.
Hightower regularly votes against rezoning requests in East Greensboro for a variety of reasons. Hightower objected to the density and said, “I just hope that it doesn’t become a ghetto.”
Other councilmembers including Outling complimented Keystone Group on the communities they have built in Greensboro. Outling said that he was primarily concerned about the density.
According to the conditions, the density will be no more than 4.1 units per acre. The least dense single-family residential zoning district in Greensboro is an R-3, which is three lots per acre.
As it was explained by Judy Stadler, representing Keystone, that the reason for the R-7 was to take advantage of the smaller lot size. She said that streams and requirements for stormwater control restricted the amount of buildable land, but increased the open space, and the overall density was being held to 4.1 lots per acre.
The City Council also unanimously approved an annexation and original zoning request for 197 acres on Youngs Mill Road and Presbyterian Road that is currently zoned Agricultural to City Conditional District-Heavy Industrial. The conditions restrict the uses to those of light industrial zoning. The annexation and zoning requests passed 9-0.
