At its March 3 meeting, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners plans to hear four rezoning requests — three near Weaverville and one in Swannanoa.
The meeting will begin with some good news from the Western North Carolina Regional Livestock Center, whose dedication to effective sales, marketing and education aims to improve the economic well-being of family farmers in WNC.
It will report a 39 percent increase in livestock sales from 2013 to 2014, which, with the savings from practices associated with the center, puts “$7 million more … in the pockets of [local] producers, annually,” reads a section of the report.
Four rezoning requests will follow, during the public hearing portion of the meeting.
For clarity, it’s worth noting the different residential zones, as defined by Buncombe County Planning and Zoning:
- An R-1 residential district is strictly for single-family homes.
- An R-2 residential district allows for both single- and multi-family homes, with up to 12 units per acre. This means single-family homes, two-family duplexes and one-building multi-family units. Larger apartment units are permitted under conditional use.
- An R-3 residential district allows all of thee above, as well as manufactured homes and manufactured home parks. This district allows for uses more commercial in nature (beyond what is listed in the chart), and is therefore not entirely residential.
(For a full list of zones and what they permit, view The Zoning Ordinance of Buncombe County).
The first request comes from various applicants for an area of the former Weaverville Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, which was transferred from Weaverville to Buncombe County control in summer 2014. The area in question runs along Dogwood Drive to Hamburg Mountain Road, ending just a bit north of Reems Creek. The request is a change from R-2 to R-1.
The next rezoning request is another section of the former Weaverville ETJ, along the short, 10-property curve on Hope Road. James A. White applied to rezone the road, which is currently R-3, to an R-1 single-family district.
Songbird Development Group, LLC, has requested that another former Weaverville ETJ space, a 1.45-acre property off of Monticello Road, switch from an R-3 residential district to a commercial service district. The property already sits across the road from a commercial district.
The final rezoning request is a for a strip of land between U.S. Highway 70 and the Swannanoa River, currently an R-3 district, to rezone to a commercial service district.
The county’s Planning Board unanimously recommended the approval of all four zone requests.
The last item on the public hearing agenda, the Board will determine if it’s viable to enter into an installment purchase contract with the Buncombe Financing Corporation in order to fund eight new projects:
- an addition to the County’s Health & Human Services Campus, including a parking deck adjacent to the addition
- the construction of Enka Intermediate School in Candler
- a new indoor firearms training facility
- a new swimming pool in Woodfin
- the renovation of the Sheriff Detention Center
- the relocation of the evidence room to 339 New Leicester Highway
- the renovation of the facility housing the Permits and Inspections Department
- new election systems, software and equipment.
The meeting begins at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3, at 200 College St., downtown Asheville, room 326. For the full agenda, click here.
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