‘Need to be a NASCAR driver.’ Mooresville road too dangerous for condos, neighbors say
A Florida developer’s planned condominiums in yet another rapidly growing part of Mooresville are out of character with surrounding neighborhoods and should be denied, the Mooresville Planning Board recommended Tuesday night.
In a 7-to-2 vote, the board sided with neighbors fed up with mounting traffic and urged the town Board of Commissioners to nix the rezoning request by Tampa developer JSL Properties LLC.
The developer wants to build 12 three-story condos in a total of four “triplex” buildings at Shearers and Faith roads — curvy former country roads on which large single-family subdivisions still sprout.
That might seem a minuscule number of homes, but the project could add 50 to 75 vehicles to already dangerous roads, Mooresville resident Patrick Wright told the board Tuesday night. The additional cars would “greatly impact access” to nearby subdivisions, he said.
‘I need to be a NASCAR driver’
Each condo would have a two-car garage and two more spaces apiece in the parking lot, according to the developer’s plans on file at the Mooresville Planning Department.
Pulling onto Shearers Road from her home near the intersection has already become a “nightmare,” “like trying to enter a five-way intersection with no traffic controls,” Dora Mobley wrote the Planning Board.
“Some days, I need to be an experienced NASCAR driver to access the road,” Mobley wrote, urging the board to recommend denying the developer’s rezoning request.
Planning Board Chair Steve McGlothlin read Mobley’s letter aloud before the vote.
John Martinez, the Tampa developer and owner of the property, didn’t attend Tuesday’s meeting. He sent project engineer Donald Munday of Mooresville-based Piedmont Design Associates.
“I know density is a concern,” Munday told the board about the condos proposed for a 2.08-acre triangular lot at the northwest corner of the intersection. “We are doing a very much street-oriented design.”
Condos would sell for around $300,000, he said.
‘Seems intrusive’
Planning staff recommended the condos be denied because they don’t fit with surrounding zoning geared to single-family homes, Mooresville planner Maureen Kulka told the board.
“I’m just trying to envision the size of this on this corner,” McGlothlin said. “Just seems to be abrupt. Seems intrusive. Just seems like a tall scale on that corner.”
The Mooresville Board of Commissioners has final say on rezonings, and is expected to take up the case at one of its regular meetings this summer, Kulka said. The date is still to be set.
