By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

How downtown Fayetteville will look 20 years from now will be influenced by the city Planning Commission's expected vote next Tuesday on plans for The Village, a mixed use development at Tiger Trail and Ga. Highway 54 west.

Commissioners are expected to send the ambitious project, which includes more than 200 homes, offices, a retail square, parks and a hotel/conference center, on to City Council with a “yea” of “nay” recommendation.

Developers Bob Rolader and Brent Scarbrough are asking for PCD (planned community development) zoning for the 110-acre parcel.

The main obstacle is that PCD zoning does not currently exist. Commissioners will decide whether to recommend creation of the flexible zoning category before they vote on a recommendation concerning the developers' request.

Approval of the new category is not a foregone conclusion. During last week's commission work session, commissioners Al Lipscomb and Allan Feldman expressed continued doubts about the proposal to replace the city's current PUD (planned unit development) zoning with the new PCD.

“Why not leave PUD in place, take out the mixed-use portion of it, and replace that with PCD,” Feldman suggested during the work session.

He said the advantage of PUD zoning over PCD is that the current category provides for use of a specific zoning category with PUD as an overlay, providing for a set maximum density overall, while allowing flexibility for different densities within the development.

PCD, he said, leaves density to be worked out between the commission and each developer. “That makes it a little arbitrary and capricious,” he said.

Lipscomb said she doesn't want the ordinance to give credit for amenities like swimming pools and tennis courts toward developers' required green space.

The ordinance calls for 30 percent of PCD developments to be set aside as green space, but if swimming pools and the like are excluded, that requirement would be difficult to meet, said developer Rolader.

“Thirty percent could be kind of painful; 20 percent might be better, especially as expensive as downtown properly is getting to be,” he said.

If commissioners take a vote Tuesday, Rolader and Scarbrough will face just one more hurdle before beginning actual work on the project, which has been in the conceptual stages for a year now.

“This has been a long project and an exciting one,” Rolader told commissioners during last week's work session.

City officials decided in 1998 to hire a consultant to master-plan the site, which is one of only two large undeveloped parcels left in Fayetteville. During a series of special committee meetings, public hearings and discussion sessions, the plan has been honed to its current dimensions.

Commissioners said last week they still are concerned about traffic problems, and asked Rolader for a traffic study.

In doing her own estimates, “I come up with a potential for 1,700 cars a day” going to and from the property, said Lipscomb. “I've got some real heartburn with this project.”

If commissioners don't feel ready to vote Tuesday, they could still table the proposal. If they vote, their recommendation will go to City Council for a first reading March 6 and a vote scheduled for March 20.