The Times West Virginian

Local News

November 20, 2008

Concern about Beverly Estates expressed

Request to proceed to second phase of development tabled

By Mallory Panuska

FAIRMONT — A request to proceed to the second phase of the developing Beverly Estates housing community was tabled Wednesday by the Fairmont City Planning Commission.

The project’s developer, Friend Construction LLC, was not able to attend the hearing scheduled for Wednesday’s monthly meeting. In turn, the request to create an additional six lots at the Watson development was deferred until the commission’s next meeting on Dec. 17.

Despite the developer’s absence, however, current and future residents of the community expressed concerns and posed questions about its progress to commissioners and city staff members.

These included concerns over the fact that after several years, there are still no street signs, sidewalks, or curbs within the development. There were also inquiries over the status of the sewage system that will need to be installed before the six new lots can be sold and concerns over the construction of a home that is under roof on a corner lot of the development.

Currently, there are 11 lots divided up within Beverly Estate, with all but five occupied by single-family homes. Phase II of the project will divide an additional six lots, and when all of the phases are complete, the project is slated to contain a total of 30 single-family homes.

City Planner Jay Rogers explained Wednesday that the developer was going to seek approval of the regulations for the second phase of the development and was also going to propose financial surety to the city for additional roads, curbs and gutters.

Through this approval, which will now be looked at Dec. 17, Rogers and the commissioners said they hope that the existing residents will get the infrastructure they need and the developers will be able to move the development toward completion.

“We want to make sure you (residents) are taken care of, no doubt,” Commission President Bill Oliver said. “But we also want to see growth in Fairmont.”

Rogers also said that the necessary rights of way for sewer lines to the new lots have been signed and recorded and that Greenhorne and O’Mara, the engineering firm contracted to install the system, is looking at the designs. The base coat of asphalt on the road was also completed recently, which was a significant step forward.

In other business Wednesday, planning commissioners set several other hearings for their next meeting on Dec. 17.

The first, a subdivision request from the Marion Regional Development Corporation, will divide two lots within the Marion Regional Development Park for expansion. And the second was a residential subdivision on Hoult Road.

A hearing was also set to look at amending the city’s code to allow for conditional use drive-thrus for any type of commercial structure within the city’s center district, which basically encompasses the Merchant Street area.

Currently, Rogers said that the language in the code only allows banks within that downtown region to have drive-thrus under conditional use regulations.

But now with the possibility of another type of business that is serious about a drive-thru coming to or expanding within the city, Rogers requested that the code be changed to allow it. Rogers also said that only allowing banks in the area to have drive-thrus was giving those business owners an “unfair advantage.”

The last hearing set by the planning commission Wednesday was for a map revision to re-zone a small section of Haymond Street to neighborhood mixed use. Rogers said the section only contains three structures and should have been zoned that way in the first place but somehow just never was.

The details of this were looked at after the commission’s last meeting when a property owner in that area requested permission to open a beauty shop there.

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.

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