P&Z to decide on Wake Robin

SALISBURY — The Planning and Zoning Commission is expected to vote on a resolution for the Wake Robin Inn expansion project on Wednesday, Dec. 18, after a long, contentious application process.

After six hearings of outcry from Lakeville residents, the public hearing was finally closed at the conclusion of a nearly five-hour meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 10. P&Z picked up the conversation again on Thursday evening, Dec. 12, to initiate its inter-commission deliberation process.

Near the meeting’s end, P&Z Chairman Michael Klemens asked the commissioners to indicate if they felt they would deny or approve the application as it stood so that a resolution could be developed to formally vote on. Four of the five commissioners present voted they would likely deny the application, however this is not P&Z’s final decision — the official vote is Wednesday evening, Dec. 18.

“Despite the fact that the applicant put so much effort into it, I think there are serious deficiencies,” Klemens said. The major issues he cited revolved around the incongruence of the development with its surrounding residential neighborhood, as well as the “unresolved issues of noise and sewer.”

The other commissioners largely agreed with Klemens’ appraisal, with several members citing the lack of specificity on the part of the applicant’s design plans as a major flaw in the proposal.

“I feel this application is incomplete in that there’s no baseline for the noise level,” said commissioner Allen Cockerline. He noted that he felt the applicant had erred severely by not including more data on how the new development’s construction — specifically the proposed event barn — would dampen noise pollution into the surrounding neighborhood.

The commission’s primary qualms with the project mirror many of the complaints levied by the public throughout the application process, despite uneven — and sometimes antagonistic — relationships between the public and P&Z.

“Some of the stuff that has been said I found highly offensive,” Klemens said, “but the bottom line is I think the neighbors have made a very good case — that the size of this expansion is out of character.”

At the Dec. 12 meeting, the commission also ultimately decided the intervenors — a panel of experts and attorney Perley Grimes representing Wells Hill Road residents Bill and Angela Cruger — had not met the burden of determining that the project would have significant detrimental environmental impacts. Josh Mackey, attorney for Aradev LLC developers, upheld at the Dec. 10 meeting that the intervenors had failed to demonstrate negative environmental repercussions associated with the project “as was the basis of their petition.”

While the intervenor didn’t sufficiently demonstrate cause for significant environmental concern, attorney Grimes’ closing remarks to the intervenor’s presentation at Tuesday’s meeting fundamentally appealed to scale and neighborly disturbance as the true driving issues with the project. “It’s too much for the site,” he said. “It’s too intrusive. It’s too large.”

“I’m sure the residents of Salisbury look to you to see to it that the quality of life is ensured,” he appealed to the commission.

At the Dec. 12 meeting, Klemens and Cockerline both suggested that the applicant withdraw without prejudice before the vote date so that they may restructure their plans, including downsizing and specifying data points within their construction schema.

Thursday night’s proceedings also allowed the commission to air some grievances that have haunted the affair, such as addressing public insinuations that P&Z and the Land Use Office, primarily directed at Klemens and Land Use Director Abby Conroy, had colluded with the applicant Aradev LLC while renegotiating zoning regulations regarding hotels in residential zones.

Cockerline asserted that the alterations in question have been in development for years: “This is nothing new, and it really boils me that [Conroy and Klemens] in particular are being grilled on actually doing a great job.”