- Graham Ultraground
- Posts
- Graham City Council
Graham City Council
12/13/22
Welcome to Ultraground. We untangle your zoning Christmas lights. With only on more week until the holiday, we're seeing cities both ramp up and slow down. But we ain't slowing down. This meeting had one key discussion that hinted at what could come to Cherry Lane in January.
December 13
You saved: 1h 48m
Cherry Lane Overlay
Cherry Lane is a road in Southeast Graham that has been eyed for development for quite some time.
The Council discussed development coming to this area and expressed that they’d like to have a plan for dealing with it. Hence the overlay.
"Robotics, artificial intelligence, research, and such, those are the types of businesses we would like in Alamance County and in Graham."
The city isn't the only one that has been thinking about development in this area. Hugo Kreuscher proposed a plan to act as the intermediary between “an interested developer” and the landowners. He described how he approached Carl Westman, a landowner, with a 1 million-above-asking-price offer and a box of cookies. Yes, you read that right.
PS if you're interested in how that went: Westman lives full-time in TN. Westman responded after ghosting Kreuscher for a while, saying that the cookie package would alert burglars that he was gone. Okay back to the deal.
Kreuscher’s plan is bold. It basically takes the responsibility off of the City Council and places it in the private sector. Isn't this what developers do already? One could argue that that's true, but this was an honest and open discourse between the city and a private citizen acting as a liaison.
I 85, which is known as the mega corridor throughout the Southeast, is providing e-commerce companies a large existing highway network, with the ability serve the quickly growing southeast population, the southeast population, the relatively low cost of living and the reassuring of manufacturing to the US are going to continue to drive all types of industrial user demand throughout the Southeast.
Kreuscher described how Crow Holdings backed out of developing a plot on Cherry Lane due to the stubbornness of the landowners. But he claimed, "I know for a fact every one of them around me will sell."
A woman in the crowd shook her head.
Tanya, the owner of 2300 Cherry Lane, described how she would never sell. In the end, Council just told Kreuscher to bring his plan to the planning board in January.
Thank you for being a part of Ultraground.
How was this report? |