PINEHURST — The Village of Pinehurst Council met Tuesday, February 28, with multiple property matters on the agenda.
The council held a public hearing for a rezoning request for the Pinehurst Resort Cottages at No. 8 to take approximately 14.65 acres of land from R-30 – medium-density residential district – to H-CD – hotel conditioning district.
“The current zoning and land use is R-30, which is a residential district,” said Planning Supervisor Alex Cameron. “It is currently vacant and part of the privately owned recreation facilities of Pinehurst No. 8 Golf Course. The proposed zoning is hotel conditional district, and this would allow for the development of nine lodging golf cottages with a total of 52 sleeping rooms.”
Five of the cottages will have four bedrooms, and four cottages will have eight bedrooms, and the height of the cottages will not exceed 35 feet. There will also be 52 parking spaces available.
“The resort has no accommodations with a golf course view,” said council member Lydia Boesch. “Which is surprising since we’re the home of American Golf, and there are no accommodations with a golf course view, so that’s a plus. In the golf industry, you’ve got to stay competitive. They’re not going to come just because we are Pinehurst. They’ve got to stay competitive, so I see this as another way for Pinehurst to stay competitive in golf.”
Following the hearing, the council approved the rezoning request.
The council was also presented with two special intensity allocation requests to utilize protected watershed property.
“The state has a watershed protection framework to protect water quality, and it limits development in the key watersheds within the state,” said Village Manager Jeff Sanborn. “The way they manage that is that they set lower thresholds for impervious surfaces than would otherwise be allowed and then grant us back special intensity allocation acreage that we can manage as a local government.”
Pinehurst has two watershed protection overlay districts, 750 acres of WS-II which allows 12% of development or one dwelling per acre, and 290 acres of WS-III which allows 24% of development or two dwellings per acre.
The first request was for one acre of WS-II in the Trotter Hills Business Park for Dr. Ron Talis Medical Office. The development is approximately 5,000 square feet of a single-story office building with associated on-site surface parking.
“Dr. Talis is a very gifted podiatrist, and I want to mention the services that he’s bringing to our area,” said council member Jeff Morgan. “It’s specifically in dealing with diabetic feet, diabetic foot ulcers, and there are a lot of studies out there that demonstrate that podiatric intervention with diabetic foot ulcers decreases the number of infections significantly, decreases the amount of time you spend in the hospital, and they are also incredibly productive in lymph salvage. So to have this professional come into our area and provide these services to our folks, I feel, is a very good thing.”
The second request was for one acre of WS-II for a surface parking lot for the adjacent Veteran’s Guardian Association, resulting in a 55-space parking lot that would provide 88 net parking spaces for the Veteran’s Guardian Association.
Both special intensity allocation requests were approved by the council.
The council also approved a budget amendment to allocate $282,000 for stormwater drainage and intersection enhancements.
“Those funds are intended to be used for enhancements to downtown, not only to drainage but also there’s an intersection improvement project,” said Public Services and Engineering Director Mike Apke. “If you go up Magnolia Road into downtown, at Magnolia and Chinquapin Road, we do need to make some drainage improvements in that intersection. We have a constant drainage problem, when it rains really heavily, in front of the wine shop there. So we’d like to fix that as well. Potentially run a pipe through the intersection down to capture some more stormwater at Market Square and actually bring it down the hill and connect it to our existing system closer to the Pinecrest end.”
The final presentation the board was presented with was the final FY23 Walkway Construction Locations for the Village.
“We are trying to construct sidewalks that enhance the quality of life, that make interconnections with our trails and walkways, in neighborhoods where they’re desired and while being unobtrusive to the neighboring yards as much as possible, all while maintaining the charm of the neighborhood.” Assistant Village Manager Doug Willardson
The two areas where the Village is planning to construct walkways are along McKenzie Road West and Pinehurst No. 6.
According to Willardson, these improvements will not increase property taxes as $400,000 is budgeted annually for walkway improvements, and all construction will happen within the right-of-ways.
The Village of Pinehurst Council will next meet March 14.
