Drought & development: How far is the Council really going?

(Note: between my writing this post on Tuesday night and Wednesday's dawn, Ray Gronberg's got a very good article up over at the Herald-Sun about Monday's events and possible impact; be sure to check it out.)

So it's 36 hours after the Council meeting, and I'm still trying to figure out precisely why the discussion of the Jordan at Southpoint project took the direction that it did Monday night. As Matt Dees notes in his article on the subject at the N&O, the Council voted to delay for two weeks a decision on extending water and sewer to this development project at Durham's southern edge, and on whether to annex the property into the city limits.

But it's not entirely clear to me that this particular decision was, at its heart, about concerns over Durham's water carrying capacity. Still, it's a harbinger of a bigger question to watch for over the next couple of weeks: was the majority of Council driven in this by concerns over this project's particular issues, which have been the subject of some dialog between the developer and City/County Planning? Or is this indeed the beginning of a significantly more restrictive approach to development in Durham?

It's noteworthy that it was Diane Catotti and not Bell (whose quotes from last night jump off the N&O page) that called for the Jordan at Southpoint water/sewer extension agreement to be pulled from the consent agenda, and to separate the annexation vote for the project from other, less-controversial items.

Catotti stressed in her comments some concerns over the project's fit for the "conservation subdivision" rules under which it's being proposed, and noted conversations taking place between the Planning Department and the developer to try to sort out those issues, noting as she did that the joint City/County planning committee was taking up some questions about loopholes and problems with that definition. The questions she pushed City staff to answer revolved around whether the staff's questions on this project could be sorted out in time for a mid-December vote.

Bell, on the other hand, focused his questions on a much sharper note -- to wit, whether there would be water capacity to support this development. Bell's line of questioning led to some furious research and furrowed brows by City Attorney Henry Blinder as he sought to find out, at Bell's query, whether or not the City could withhold water/sewer connection permits down the line from a developer if it turned out that there's not enough utility capacity to serve them.

Bell's sharp words on water capacity come just one meeting after the Council approved a rezoning for the Alexan Farms apartment complex on Garrett Road, which would actually add more residential units than this development. Of course, Bell was not present for that Council meeting; at the time, however, Catotti defended the project as smart growth and noted that growth in Durham's water supply was planned out over a multi-decade period to meet an expected rise in population.

Clearly, though, something's changed in the Council's dynamic between that meeting and this one, and the missing word seems to be "Bell."

(There is a certain perversity to the discussion of a moratorium on projects at the stage where Jordan at Southpoint stands right now -- namely, at least eighteen months or so from the first house being occupied. To wit, our water crisis is happening now, but there's plenty of construction busily underway to bring new houses online and plug 'em into our water mains throughout the City. Those houses will use water now. Projects like this one will use water in a year and a half, and as one longtime Council observer mused to me after the meeting, if we don't have the water supply problem solved by then, we've got bigger problems than a new development -- the latter of which would at most represent a couple of percentage points on the growth-meter.)

That said, one of the more interesting outcomes of the night was the Council's push to map water supply growth over residential growth; Bell, for instance, asked City staff on Monday for a very sensible thing modeled on Hillsborough's approach, where they measure water supply capacity growth over time to provide a period-by-period measure of the town's carrying capacity for how many new homes can be added at any time.

A policy that clearly makes sense -- don't approve more houses until you know you have water supply for them. Ultimately, water capacity planning should be about linking how fast we grow with how fast we grow our reservoirs, interconnections, and treatment plants -- not simply as a reaction to a long period of dry seasons.

Such an approach to examining water capacity as part of comprehensive land use planning is just smart, and something we should have been doing for years. But, please, don't couch it in terms of the drought. Today's drought and 2009's development are not elements that are linked in cause-and-effect; by the same token, it's not healthy for our planning process if, say, Hurricane Zanzibar fills the reserves in 2008 and suddenly we forget about water supply planning.

Mike Woodard made a related point in his comments, reiterating a concern he's raised before at Council that decision-making is all too often done agenda-by-agenda, without the opportunity for elected officials to pull back as a group and ask the big-picture questions about how prepared Durham is for growth.

. . .

But, back to the question at hand -- is Bell really signaling a sea change in development in Durham, a halt to new construction in light of water supply issues? And, if so, how consistently will the Council call for such a halt across multiple types of development?

The proof will lie in the pudding later this week, though. After all, this Thursday the Council is scheduled to sign a predevelopment agreement on Rolling Hills, the beginning step to using $2.7 million in City funds to buy up vacant lots and failed housing units in the development. And, surely, a project that will add net new housing units in Durham.

What about Thursday's discussion of a proposed sale of 727 N. Mangum St. to UDI Community Development Corporation, a prominent local non-profit that happens to have Mayor Bell as its COO. What does UDI plan to do with the parcel? I'm assuming it's part of the Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization Project described at this November 2, 2007 RFP on the City's web site (emphasis added):

UDI proposes to develop a commercial/residential project in the Old Five Points area located on North Mangum Street between West Morgan Street and West Trinity Street. Contract approval is expected in December 2007. The $186,107.00 allocation will be used for land acquisition and partial construction costs.  The project will remove blighted buildings along a gateway corridor heading into downtown Durham and will stimulate new business development and home ownership opportunities for Durham residents in this targeted area. Total Cost: $612,873.00 Public Cost: $186,107.00 

Or the City's sale of part of the Durham Station site for a mixed-use development to include residential units, expected to net the City $900,000?

In short: the Jordan at Southpoint issue may turn out to be more heat than light, a matter that ends up being about naught except a planning dispute.

Or it might turn out to be a point of pause to double-check the maths on the amount of water capacity and reserves in the system.

But somehow, I suspect that a full-blown halt to development isn't on the way -- not without a much bigger impact on Bell's own downtown and neighborhoods than the mayor and council would likely consider.

Comments

[Chris P.]

Yay Hillsborough!