Giopolitics

File Under: Poetic Justice.

Mike Nifong has filed for bankruptcy. Next, hopefully, comes jail.

The Triangle Business Journal has a story on the proposed development on 751 across the street from Chancellor's Ridge. According to an email I received from a member of the development team this afternoon, the developers filed their plan with the city today.

The article notes:

A pair of one-time partners in Raleigh's Boylan Cos. are teaming up with entrepreneur Neal Hunter to bring a big mixed-use development to southern Durham.

The 164-acre project, thus far unnamed, would be off N.C. 751 between Stagecoach Road and the Chatham County line. It would feature between 1,200 and 1,300 residences and at least 500,000 square feet of commercial space, says Alex Mitchell, a former Boylan Cos. partner developing the site with Boylan President Tyler Morris.

The project, costing more than $50 million, would have civic buildings including a YMCA, an elementary school and a fire station. Mitchell and Morris are in talks to donate the land for the projects.

"It's a real kind of grade-A product, and I think it's going to be a top-notch deal for Durham," Mitchell says.

Hunter, a Durham businessman who co-founded lighting company Cree and is now CEO of LED Lighting Fixtures, sold the land for the project to Morris and Mitchell, his cousin.

Both Hunter and Mitchell declined to discuss the price of the transaction, but both said the deal was done at market value - about $100,000 per acre in southern Durham, Mitchell said, making the cost somewhere in the range of $15 million to $20 million.

Hunter is a minority, passive partner in Southern Durham Development Inc., the company Morris and Mitchell set up to develop the land. The site is about a mile from Colvard Farms, a 600-acre residential project Hunter developed.

and

Hunter, who owns another 86 acres of land nearby that he says he has no current plans to develop...

So, the person who sold the land and still has a huge financial stake in the development going ahead also owns another large parcel of land down the road, yet has no plans to develop it? It appears reasonable to assume that if this development goes through that it will only be the first shoe dropped by this group.

The proposed Meadowmont on steroids development planned for 751 in Durham headed toward Jordan Lake strikes a little to close to home for me since I live in Chancellor's Ridge, which is across (the Townhomes) and just down the street from the proposed development.

When my wife and I moved to Chancellor's Ridge eighteen months ago, we liked that it was close to Southpoint and the amenities it offered. Equally important, however, was the presence of Jordan Lake and all the protected land headed down 751. When we moved in, our Realtor and nearly everyone else we talked with about the area stressed the lack of future development in the area as being a huge benefit to buying into Chancellor's Ridge. People cited both the protected lands, the Jordan Lake State Park, and the city and county of Durham's commitments regarding development. Unfortunately, it now appears that many of these assumptions were/are either flawed or directly under attack in the form of the new proposed development.

Bull City Rising, an excellent blog on all things Durham, which I found this morning has several posts relating this issue. This one, in particular, is worth a read. It summarizes events to date and also the community meeting that was held last night in Chancellor's Ridge.

I attended the meeting and did not walk away reassured regarding the benefits of the development for the environment, the people who live in the area, and the city/county as a whole. It is hard to believe that the development as planned will have a larger footprint than the Southpoint Mall!

I have intentionally tried to stay out of Durham and North Carolina politics since moving here, but it appears that this will likely be the event to change of all of that.