City of Fayetteville FY2011 Fee Schedule
City of Fayetteville Building Plan Review Notice
EPA Announcement
EPA Region 4 has just made an incredible resource available. The Sustainable Design and Green Building Toolkit for Local Government, http://www.epa.gov/region4/recycle/green-building-toolkit.pdf. The Toolkit is designed to assist local governments in identifying and removing barriers to sustainable design and green building within their permitting process. The Toolkit addresses the local codes of ordinances that would affect the design, construction, renovation, and operation and maintenance of a building and its immediate site. It contains an Assessment Tool, a Resource Guide, and guide to developing an Action Plan for implementing changes to the permitting process. The Toolkit was designed for use by local government officials, but it can also be used by members of the development community, local government “green teams,” and other building professionals.
LEAD PAINT RRP PROGRAM
Last week the EPA announced the agency is delaying enforcement of the Lead-Based Paint Repair, Renovation and Painting Rule. This decision will have no effect in North Carolina. Our program became effective January 1, 2010. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health, Health Hazards Control Unit (HHCU) administers the program in the state of North Carolina in lieu of EPA.
Please continue to visit http://www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/lead/lhmp.html for more information.
THOUGHTS ON THE UDO FROM THE HOUSING COMMUNITY
There is considerable buzz on the street these days about the proposed Unified Development Ordinance, otherwise known as the UDO. Different camps have different perspectives, and for each camp, their perspective is their reality. True reality usually lies somewhere in between. I would like to share with you some realities from our perspective.
First of all the Housing Community is not against the UDO. We feel it has not been fully vetted and is not ready for passage. Our volunteers have been faithful members of the Stakeholders group that has reviewed the document for over two years now and have been integral to the process. The City has probably received more “in kind” free consultation from all the Stakeholders than they have paid the Chapel Hill consultants. Our members are Stakeholders because they understand the importance of the UDO and want to be sure we get it right the first time because so much is at stake. We want to be a positive part of the process.
At the June 1 presentation by the consultants and City staff, it was our perception that these presenters were saying that the UDO was ready to go and that there might be a handful of items over which there were disagreements. That is where our reality was much different from theirs. During the two year process, there had been numerous points that our Stakeholders had made to staff on repeated occasions that to our way of thinking had not been addressed. To our count, there were 66 items given in writing in January that we felt were still unanswered that Staff seemed to be saying had been resolved.
We honored the process and once again presented these items, this time to the Planning Commission in writing on June 15 with book and page references plus the reasoning behind each of our objections. Some of these objections are quite complex and will require a good deal of discussion to resolve. Some of them should be solved quickly. Our concern is how Staff’s reality was that this current version of the 525 page UDO document was nearly ready for passage, when we had repeated raised multiple objections on at least 66 items verbally and in writing since January.
There are plenty of specific points of disagreement we can discuss but major ones concern the Open Space requirements and the Parks and Recreation fee in lieu of provision; what we perceive as a general disdain for multi-family projects and onerous requirements for design and layout; the definition and enforcement of “light trespassing;” an opposite opinion on the merits of connectivity; and that the Administrative Manual is not completed. There are also concerns with block length, the location and layout of street trees, sidewalks and utility easements, parking requirements, and many other substantive issues.
According to our research from the engineer who worked on the project and is a Stakeholder, if the Parks and Recreation fee in lieu of were applied to the Westlake at Morganton Apartment complex, there would have been an increased cost from that provision alone of approximately $750,000 which would have killed the project. This same engineer applied the Open Space requirement and Parks and Recreation fee in lieu of to the Patriot Park subdivision and found the added cost to this subdivision from these two provisions alone would have been nearly $500,000. These are staggering numbers that our reality cannot justify, especially from just two of the UDO provisions.
The UDO is a fabulous academic study in Planning. We feel that the process must be taken further. You must take it to the field, and that is where our reality says the UDO needs work. We feel that the following acid tests questions need to be applied initially to our 66 questions and then to the next version of the revised document:
The Home Building community will continue to work hard to produce an ordinance that provides a more attractive community with more logical development in a cost efficient manner. We feel the UDO in its present form does not provide that. To our way of thinking, it needs considerably more revision, to which we continue to be prepared to be a positive part.
Malcolm McFadyen
2010 HBAF President
The Economic Impact of Residential Real Estate
Development in Cumberland County
The study undertaken by the Home Builders Association of Fayetteville, Inc. explores the economic impact of residential real estate development in Cumberland County, NC. It provides overall estimates of the economic impacts stemming from three development scenarios: 1. single-family development, 2. apartment and 3. condominium/town home development. Click Here to read this study.
