Park Place Apartments Denied
Originally Published: March 29, 2024
The continued review of the concept site plan for Park Place Apartments was on March 18th. Attorney Chris Longmore, representing developer John Parlett, and Jay Hopson, project engineer, answered questions about the project. Major discussion points included parking, child safety, traffic, and impacts on neighbors. Public feedback was also heard during a more than three hour long meeting.
Jackie Chandler of Traffic Concepts, Inc. explained the original traffic study was completed in 2008 for the overall project of Park Place. Chandler compared the results of that study to what has actually been developed to assess remaining trip generation capacity. This original analysis showed trip generation capacity was exceeded with the apartments in place. However, Chandler has since been contacted by John Parlett, the developer, who provided a 2010 traffic study which showed additional trip capacity. In 2008, the plan for Park Place included 30 townhouses and 8 single family homes, which was revised in 2010 to instead have a 138K SF office building and 28K SF church. Should the apartments exceed the trip capacity, the developer is required to provide traffic mitigation.
Longmore said Parlett paid for significant mitigation in 2010 which provided more traffic relief than was necessary. Improvements included adding a second left turn lane on SB235 and widening Shady Mile Dr for additional lanes at the intersection, creating a right turn lane for Park Place Way, extending left turn lanes at First Colony on NB235, a funding contribution to the FDR Blvd capital project, and dedicating significant road frontage to State Highway for future expansion. Additional trip capacity still exists due to those efforts. Even so, the developer was still open to the previously offered mitigation solution of relining the right turn lane at Shady Mile Dr on NB235 to extend the through lane.
On parking, Longmore said the Park Place has a shared parking agreement among tenants. Essentially, the lease tenants (Red Robin, Olive Garden, etc) agreed to share parking so if a customer of one business parks in another parking lot they are not towed. Using this agreement, the apartments project will satisfy its parking requirement using 70 spaces shared with another business. Planning Commission Chair Howard Thompson was concerned about the availability of overflow parking if neighboring businesses are busy. Thompson also commented on apartment residents, or their guests, potentially having to park in another parking lot with a long walk to their residence. Commission member Kim Summers asked if parking will be assigned at the apartments, but was told spaces could not be assigned because of the shared parking agreement in place.
Several commission members also voiced concerns over school children walking to the intersection of Abell House Lane and Shady Mile Dr for the school bus stop. Jay Hopson, project engineer, said they were working on the feasibility of moving the bus stop closer but the school system would have to sign off. A member of the public suggested there could be more pedestrian use of Shady Mile Dr, where people already walk along the road thinking it's safe because of the dead end. Commission member Mike Brown said neighboring residents worried about additional traffic trying to avoid congestion or accidents and going through their neighborhoods. Abell House Lane will likely be connected to California Blvd as the car wash is constructed next to Texas Roadhouse this summer, drawing more through traffic.
COPT Defense, owners of the SAIC building, objected to the construction of Park Place Apartments. Chris Finley, representing the company, said their current tenants work to support the defense industry and require secure environments. Nearby apartments would make it easy to place an enemy agent gathering intelligence. COPT owns 14 buildings, or about 40% of the office space in California/Lexington Park, Finley said, and this building “would be the outlier” if residential development occurred next door. Anne Mead, attorney for COPT Defense, said the shared parking agreement is not unusual but is often for shared business parking that does not include residential.
Consensus among several board members indicated the outcome, with all board members voting to deny the concept site plan.
