Senior facility plans face new setback

It’s back to the drawing board for developers of a planned assisted care and senior housing facility on 4.72 acres at the northwest corner of Gamebird Road and Simmons Street.

County commissioners Tuesday denied a request to overturn a May ruling by the Regional Planning Commission to deny a permit for the facility based on a number of concerns, including lack of nearby utilities as well as potential fire safety issues.

Plans originally called for a four-story building with 32 units dedicated to assisted living and 128 units dedicated to independent senior housing.

Concerns were raised in January that the building as planned was too high and a fire at the facility would be too difficult to fight.

The plans were then changed to make the facility only three stories. But at a May 13 RPC hearing, the development was again denied a permit by 6-0 vote, with one abstention.

Commissioners were sympathetic to the developer’s long work on the project.

Commissioner Lorinda Wichman asked at one point if county planning staff were walking the project managers through the process.

J.R. Raviz, the project manager, along with Joseph Goode, a member of the RPC who also is the architect on the project, confirmed they have worked long and hard to address planning issues.

“Since the concern was brought up, we’ve redesigned the building to three stories to satisfy the 35-foot maximum heighth requirements for the side. We went back and forth with the planning department to make sure we comply with what has been discussed and brought up at the January RPC meeting.

“And then in May, basically, the RPC denied the application. The staff report showed no indication of negative impact from the project,” Raviz said.

Later he added that he had worked with planning staff for more than a year getting the project ready.

Goode expressed his exasperation with the slow progress.

“This project, as I mentioned before at the last meeting, I did not understand why we’re going though this over and over,” he said.

Commissioners attempted to put a fine point on their objections to the project, namely that they agreed with the RPC that the location was not the right place for such a facility.

Commissioner Dan Schinhofen read some of the May RPC meeting minutes into the record, noting that the surrounding area was zoned rural residential, where homesteads generally are on one or more acre lots.

“We have planning and zoning for a reason. I agree that this would not be the best place for this,” he said. “There’s a multitude of reasons why it doesn’t fit in that area. If you want to bring it back, start with RPC again with the mind that you are going to provide this water and sewer and address the fire concerns, I still don’t think that neighborhood is right for this.”

The county’s community development director, Darrell Lacy, said the developer is starting to realize he needs to find a new location if the project is going to get off the ground.

“This is a project that we think would be appropriate in some other areas of the community, but this is not what we think is the ideal spot for this. They are currently negotiating for other parcels in the community. We’d like to have them here I think,” he said.

Goode confirmed that a few new parcels for the project are in the review stages. Lacy suggested that county planners were assisting in this regard.

“They are currently looking at another parcel of land that is much closer to the downtown area, where the utilities and emergency response and stuff like that should not be an issue,” he said.

At the Gamebird and Simmons location, it would cost the developers almost $5 million just to hook up to water and sewer.

Commissioner Frank Carbone made the motion to uphold the RPC’s denial of the project as it currently stands, but he made clear the developers should simply keep working because the community would welcome the new facility.

“Doing this without prejudice means you can come back almost immediately if you need to and re-initiate this project. So it’s not that you have to wait, six, eight or 10 months. You can come back immediately,” he said.