Developer Modifies Pine Forest Road Plan to Suit Neighbors

Written by Laura Douglass, Seven Lakes Times Reporter

Friday, 16 October 2009

   By offering an alternate traffic plan, developer Bob Hansen of MHK Ventures, LLC responded quickly to a key point of contention with neighbors of the proposed Pine Forest Development, a 1,799-acre major subdivision and resort that will be located along the busy NC Highway 211 corridor.
   On Thursday, October 15, Hansen conducted a second Neighborhood Meeting on the project and presented a modified traffic circulation plan that completely eliminated a public access road in his original proposal that would have connected Archie Road to NC Highway 73.
   Hansen said he was comfortable working with either traffic plan and left the final decision up to the community.
   A verbal poll of the crowd showed majority support for the modified plan, which Hansen said he would present to the Moore County Planning Board for review on Thursday, November 5.    However, despite the developer's best intentions, there is no sign the existing traffic problems on Archie Road will be solved anytime soon.
   Residents of this once-quiet, no-outlet street, located midway between Pinehurst and West End, face complete gridlock twice each school day when West Pine Middle School fills in the morning and empties in the afternoon.
   Commuters on NC-211 are similarly affected, with traffic backing up a quarter a mile or more during these same periods. And the new 500-student West Pine Elementary School under construction immediately behind and adjacent to West Pine Middle will only serve to increase traffic and congestion along this busy stretch.
   The NC-211 road widening project proposed by the North Carolina State Transportation Improvement Plan [NC-STIP] was initially set to begin in 2005. However, the project has now been delayed twice and is now expected to commence in 2012.
   Hansen's modified Pine Forest Development plan calls for a new traffic light and main entrance on NC-211 approximately one-quarter mile west of Archie Road. This entrance will provide access to a proposed retail area as well as Pine Forest's resort and gated communities.

    With the public access road removed from the plan, a private interior road would now provide access to a proposed tertiary wastewater treatment plant that will serve both Pine Forest and the Dormie Club, another major project currently under development by Hansen.

PUD-Hamlet Rezoning Requested
   The Master Plan includes a rezoning request for 1,623 acres to Planned Unit Development-Hamlet [PUD-H] with a combined maximum density of 890 total units, including hotel rooms and private residences. With no more than 300 hotel rooms, the resort will also feature a spa, conference center, and fitness center. Each of the two planned golf courses would have its own clubhouse. In addition to the retail center proposed along NC-211, a small "farmers'-market-style" retail area is proposed at the NC-73 entrance.
   Projected by Hansen to cost $60 to $80 million just to get started, Pine Forest will be broken into two individual gated communities that will share amenities, design characteristics, and infrastructure. One of those gated areas, the "resort" community includes the retail area and hotel, with eighteen and nine-hole golf courses. The second gated community will be located north of Nick's Creek and will also feature an eighteen-hole golf course.
   Water for the project is expected to come from Montgomery County, based on a yet-to-be-negotiated agreement between Moore and Montgomery Counties. Hansen has offered to pay up to $3 million to lay water pipe from Candor to connect with the county system at Seven Lakes and fund some infrastructure improvements needed in Montgomery County in order to make the water available.
   However, Hansen said his first step, once the project is approved, will be constructing the on-site wastewater plant. That plant will initially take 350,000 to 500,000 gallons of wastewater from the county's existing system, so that the treated effluent can be used to irrigate the Dormie Club. Once Pine Forest Development comes on line, a larger development with more acreage, the wastewater treatment plant would be able to remove and treat an estimated 640,000 gallons per day of county wastewater.

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