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Suffolk City Council approved an ordinance for a rezoning request for property located on Pitchkettle Rd on the Route 58 bypass, changing the zoning from Commerce Park (CP), Office Institutional (O-I), and Residential Urban (RU) zoning district to Residential Compact zoning district (Conditional).

Following the council’s Wednesday, April 17 meeting, Director of Planning and Community Development Kevin Wyne detailed the background history of ordinance RZN2023-005, noting that a portion of the property was previously rezoned from CP to RU and O-I in 2007. This paved the way for the development of 179 age-restricted townhomes and 20,000 square feet of commercial space, with the townhome units resulting in 5.0 units per acre.

“In this case, the applicant is proposing rezoning the entire site, consisting of 63 acres from the existing CP, 0-I and RU conditional designations to that residential compact designation I discussed earlier,” Wyne said. “The applicant envisions, in this case, constructing 335 townhome units. The construction of 335 townhome units on the site at 58 acres … it would result in a density of 5.7 units per acre and that represents a modest increase over what is approved for a portion of the property currently.”

Wyne detailed the 10 proffers the applicant provided in support of their application, which includes a limit of 335 townhome units, a minimum square footage of 1,700 square feet or residential space as well as cash contributions to advance capacity at both elementary and high school levels for $5.85 million, which includes an additional $1.05 million above what is necessary to adequately advance capacity at elementary school level for the proposed Elephant’s Fork replacement. 

Likewise, a $100,000 contribution towards the city’s Route 58/Pitchkettle Rd Interchange CIP project was also listed. The Phasing Modification of maximum certificates of occupancy (COs) was also detailed over five years between 2027 and 2031, with 2027 remaining at 48 maximum COs. 2028 sees a change from 72 to 120, 2029 from 72 to 192, 2030 from 84 to 276, and 2031, 59 to 335.

While the Planning Commission had a recommendation of denial during their March 19 meeting in a vote of 2 to 6, Wyne followed that planning staff evaluated the application against “comprehensive plan and the Unified Development Ordinance” and recommended its approval. Council Member Roger Fawcett moved for approval of the ordinance request, noting that the developer has done what they asked him to within the 60 day time period.

“With that, I am at the point where if you requested him to do something and he’s met the demand, it looks about as close as you can get, I am going to go ahead and move for approval of this ordinance request,” Fawcett said.

Johnson asked for discussion, noting the Elephant’s Fork Elementary School replacement project.

“Anyway you look at these numbers, our schools are going to be overloaded by 2031. I am having a hard time being responsible with this if we’re going to allow development and we don’t have the school capacity for it and we don’t have it on the CIP. I thought the discussion was [that] it would be on the CIP that we would at least have those schools in focus,” Johnson said. “I also have a little bit of a problem with $100,000 for road construction. I use Pitchkettle Road everyday… I have not been in favor of this from day one and I don’t think I can vote in favor of it tonight. But that’s a lot of traffic.” 

When asked about the traffic plan for Pitchkettle Rd, Suffolk Director of Public Works Robert E. Lewis said they have expanded a study looking at the Route 460 and Route 10 interchange to include both Wilroy and Pitchkettle Rd.

“At this point, we have a vision that, most likely, that interchange will get modified to what’s called a bowtie,” Lewis said. “Traffic signals would actually impede traffic rather than enhance it, and part of this funding here is to help us do that study to help get through all the regulatory process so that we can then start seeking the funding for construction. I believe there may already be one other development in the area that’s had to contribute to this fund previously, and there’s already some money in the books for that. Ideally, with a traffic generator like this, there’s not a better place to put it than by a high capacity high speed archical highway.”

While Johnson says there is “definitely a safety situation” on the entrance from Route 58 getting on to Pitchkettle, Lewis says he sees it differently from his perspective.

“I am not really seeing it sir,” Lewis said. “It may be, but without searching the police accident data, I travel it several days a week, also going and coming from work and I have not seen a real safety issue there. But again, it would take a study to really verify that one way or the other.”