A controversial plan by Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin and his business partner to build a 300-unit apartment complex just off Cedar Creek Road advanced on June 24 when the City Council voted 5-3 to rezone the site and 8-0 to annex it into the city limits.
The mayor’s project is one of three residential apartment projects underway near the commercial cluster of hotels, restaurants and gas stations that surround Cedar Creek Road’s interchange with Interstate 95 at Exit 49. Combined, the three projects are planned to have more than 1,000 units.
In addition to the mayor’s 300-unit apartment complex:
- Florida-based Cricket Council USA plans more than 500 units off Cedar Creek Road and fronting I-95. The plans list outdoor recreation facilities, including cricket fields with locker rooms and bleachers for cricket tournaments.
- A former Holiday Inn hotel is being turned into apartments by GoodHomes Communities. GoodHomes Cedar Creek is to have approximately 200 units.
Arguments for the mayor’s apartments
City documents indicate Colvin and his business partner, Darrin Collins of Cedar Creek Road LLC, want to build the apartments on about 28 acres off Cedar Creek Road between Fields Road and Water Oaks Drive. This is across Cedar Creek Road from the Locks Creek residential subdivision.
Fayetteville lawyer Jonathan Charleston, representing Colvin and the project, said Fayetteville has a shortage of affordably priced housing. Younger people and members of the military at Fort Liberty prefer apartments, he said, and this project will help meet that demand.
“This location is appropriate for this type of development,” Charleston said, and more of that kind of development is happening in the vicinity. When Interstate 295 is finished, he said, people in that part of town will have easy access to Fort Liberty.
The proposed Interstate 685 will drive more growth if it is routed through the area, he said.
Tom Lloyd, a former Cumberland County county planning director and the chairman of the Cumberland County Joint Planning Board, said the county’s 2030 land use plan in 2009 designated this area to be an urban area. A 2008 document for the 2030 plan defines “urban area” as a place with four or more units per acre, with urban services including water and sewer and stormwater management.
“You had the employment generating centers out at Exit 49, the newly located industrial park, downtown,” Lloyd said. The county set development standards “looking to the future that this would be urban development,” he said.
Neighbors organized against the mayor
Nearby residents who dislike the Cedar Creek Road LLC project formed an organization called The Fields Road Group to try to stop the project. They spoke against the plans at the June 24 city council meeting.
Robert Naylor lives on Water Oaks Drive next door to the site. He said flooding is an issue, and he does not think the project is appropriate for the community.
“An apartment complex does not fit the current landscape of single-family homes and farmland,” Naylor said. “And I believe it is not in the community’s best interest for the mayor and developers to work together on personal projects. From the builder’s perspective, it is smart to have the mayor as a business partner on a project that will require the city’s approval to move forward.
“How can the mayor have citizens’ best interest at heart when he has a personal financial stake in this project? This rezoning sets a dangerous precedent for all future land development.”
The city council recused Colvin, with his personal financial interest in the project, and Councilwoman Lynne Greene, at their request, from voting on the Cedar Creek Road LLC project, due to conflict of interest. Greene said she is the president of a company that owns property in the Lock’s Creek neighborhood. In her role with that company and property, Greene said the city attorney advised her, there could be concerns that she would not be able to make unbiased decisions on the matter.
Jeremy Stanley of Cleveland Avenue questioned an assertion by Charleston that Cumberland County has a severe shortage of apartments. He said he looked at rental listings online and found many units available. Fort Liberty has vacancies in base housing apartments and homes, too, he said.
Brandon Perdue of Cedar Creek Road said he is an engineer for the Army at Fort Liberty and has city planning and development experience from that role. “Bottom line up front is: this proposed rezoning does not conform with Fayetteville’s 2040 comprehensive plan, the future land use map, its residential suitability map, or commercial suitability map,” he said.
Lock’s Creek already has flooding issues, Perdue said.
“And make no mistake, if these apartments get built, it will cause flooding, it will worsen it for us,” he said. “During Hurricane Florence, I was carrying goats off my property in knee-deep water.”
Charleston, responding on behalf of the proposal, said the city staff and the North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality will set requirements to control stormwater. “The development of the units that are requested may or may not happen, depending on whether or not the stormwater can be managed,” he said.
In the past, the professionals have said some properties can’t be developed as the owner wants, Charleston said. “So all the risk is on the developer.”
The council votes
Council Members Kathy Keefe Jensen, Courtney Banks-McLaughlin, Derrick Thompson, D.J. Haire and Deno Hondros voted to change the site’s zoning so the apartment complex may be built. This included a restriction that no more than 300 apartments are allowed.
Colvin told CityView on Friday that the plan includes provisions for retaining stormwater to prevent flooding.
Council Members Mario Benavente, Brenda McNair and Malik Davis voted against it. The property is in Davis’ City Council district.
Jensen, the mayor pro tem, said a restrictive covenant that the previous owners put on the land will protect the neighbors. In real estate, a restrictive covenant places restrictions on the use of property when it’s sold. If the city council were to reject the mayor’s proposal, she said, it could still be built under county stormwater standards, which aren’t as strong as the city’s.
Davis, who represents this area on the city council, asked about other potential uses for the property, such as a youth club, a community center or a swimming pool.
Benavente wanted to know what could be done about flooding. Engineer Byron Reeves who oversees stormwater for the city, told Benavente he expects the city to require the property to control the stormwater of a severe storm that occurs once every 25 years.
More apartments and a cricket stadium coming
Colvin said on Friday that he and his partners don’t yet have a timetable for construction.
Meanwhile, the other two apartment projects are underway at the Exit 49 interchange, less than a mile from the mayor’s project.
A former Holiday Inn and Clarion Hotel at 1944 Cedar Creek Road is being converted into an apartment building by GoodHomes Communities. GoodHomes is a New York-based real estate company that is trying to reduce the housing shortage for working people. Its website says it buys poorly performing hotels and senior living centers and converts them into apartments for people whose wages are slightly below to slightly above an area’s median income.
One of GoodHomes’ webpages says the project will have 198 apartments, while another lists 201 apartments. It says GoodHomes Cedar Creek is scheduled to open this year.
Across town in Fayetteville’s Bordeaux neighborhood, GoodHomes is converting a former hotel on Owen Drive into an apartment building with 255 units.
Cricket Council USA has cleared land for its long-awaited apartment and sports complex on Jim Johnson Road at Exit 49, Cricket Council USA founder Maq Qureshi told CityView on Thursday. He said he is taking bids for construction, and he hopes to hold cricket tournaments on the site starting in 2025.
The Fayetteville City Council in August 2022 voted to rezone and annex about 70 acres for the project.
Two site plans filed with the city in 2022 show varied possibilities for how the project could be built. The plans list 512 to 576 apartment units, one to two cricket fields with bleachers for 600 or 1,200 people, and a building for lockers and media. There also could be a multipurpose recreation field, two soccer fields, a recreation center, a tennis court and pickleball courts.
Cricket Council USA picked Fayetteville’s I-95 Exit 49, Qureshi said, because it has a central location on the East Coast along I-95 for teams to travel to competitions, and it has hotels.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.