With a vote imminent, Brandywine Hundred residents again appealed to New Castle County to reject a rezoning proposal that would make way for an age-restricted community at the Pilot School site on Garden of Eden Road.
The special-needs school has designs on a new site on Woodlawn Road, but needs to sell its current property to build there.
Neighbors say they don't want to stand in the way of the move, but can't accept the density being proposed on the old site: 150-units community on just 15 acres. But builder Jerome Heisler said something of that scope is necessary to make purchasing the property financially viable.
The plan features a combination of single-family homes and town homes, some of which stand four-stories high.
In a meeting that stretched over three hours, nearly a dozen residents spoke out against the proposal, saying the density was inconsistent with the single-family communities of Tavistock and Eden Ridge.
The property is now zoned suburban, which could accommodate roughly 30 units.
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Columbia Place by the Numbers Units: 150 |
Tavistock resident Meg Campbell said while the Land Use Department's favorable recommendation to council describes the site as along the Concord Pike corridor, Garden of Eden Road is actually a much smaller country road that's not designed for such a development.
"Garden of Eden Road is a narrow, tree-lined, two-lane road with slim shoulders and barely any sidewalks," she said. "[The Pilot School's] own web page says the school is 'located on 16.5 acres of land... in a quiet, residential neighborhood.'"
Residents also take issue with a 25 percent density bonus incorporated into the plan because it qualifies as a redevelopment site. They say that the county's redevelopment ordinance was never intended to apply to residential sites, and that the site should not qualify anyway because the school is not vacant or under-performing.
"The approval of this project as a redevelopment...on the site of a fully utilized and vibrant school sets a troubling precedent which will be used to the future detriment of communities throughout New Castle County," said Charles Landry, land use chairman for the Council of Civic Organizations of Brandywine Hundred.
But New Castle County Land Use General Manager David Culver said the ordinance was never designated only for vacant sites.
"Saying something has to be vacant or abandoned would lead to an absurd result," Culver said. "It would mean we'd have to wait for properties to become run down and a blight before we could redevelop them and that doesn't make sense."
A vote on the plan is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, but Councilman Robert Weiner (R-Chatham) said he is likely to table it to have additional questions answered by land use officials.
