Housingprojecteyed

NEWTON GROVE — The first steps toward major development of a large subdivision came to fruition for Newton Grove following the town board’s OK on the project’s first plat Monday night.

With that approval, the town will begin work on what will be a 10.5-acre tract to be located on the west side of Carolina Street and north of West Grove Street which will provide 22 lots for potential new houses.

The initial plat proposal was brought to the public back in May when City of Smithfield Planning Director Paul Embler laid out further details about the project. Embler assists Newton Grove with its planning and zoning matters.

“It’s zoned RA-20 and in RA-20 are provisions for providing water and sewers which is requested in the plat for the subdivision,” Emlber said. “The utilities will be provided by the town of Newton Grove and the power by Duke Energy. The fire and police for the subdivision will also be (handled by) the town. In the Land Use Plan, it calls for residential to be in this particular area and the roads in the subdivision will be to NCDOT standards and the overall subdivision plat complies with the town’s ordinance,” Embler said when he first presented the proposal.

The approval of the plat marks the end of two months of delayed planning, which was due to ongoing concerns from town residents about potential problems with stormwater and flooding that could come with the subdivision. The biggest problem involved a small pipe along Hwy 55 which residents said has been a flooding problem for quite awhile. That concern was even greater now as water from the subdivision will run through that area and residents were not on board with approving the subdivision until that issue could be resolved.

That problem caused the board to table its decision until they could find solutions to remedy the issue.

Those solutions came Monday night when TRC Site and Design Director Tyrus Clayton offered alternatives to the board.

“Since our last meeting we’ve gained a lot of new information much due to the efforts of the mayor and Commissioner Smith here,” TRC Site and Design Director Tyrus Clayton said during Monday’s meeting. “We actually have a copy of the Core of Engineers 2019 study they did and lot of good information was in that document. They gave us some alternatives across town for some other pipe fits to be completed to help with some of the drainage issues across the whole town, particularly the one area that’s been a question and caused of a lot of discussions.

“At the same time, our firm has looked at it and we put together a technical memorandum to help the town come up with a solution, especially looking at that problem pipe that crosses Hwy 55 that we’ve talked a lot about. Installing a bigger pipe, that’s probably gonna be your best alternative to help alleviate some of the stormwater issues you’ve seen in that community.

“DOT has also been involved in that discussion, too, if I’m not mistaken, and they’re willing to offer their assistance, looking at what we want to do there. I don’t think they’ve guaranteed any kind of financial input yet but that’s still an option we’d like to investigate.”

The actual scope and cost to address the issue was currently unknown. Clayton, however, did mention that the technical memorandum takes some data of the known area which they’ll use to come up with an engineer’s estimate of size and cost that the town would have to undertake to fix the problem.

“We’re more than willing to jump in and help immediately so we can push this forward and, hopefully, get that pipe issue resolved, potentially as we begin development at the same time. So I think, together with this effort, those concerns of stormwater drainage issues in that area can partially be eliminated with a little bit of effort on that existing ditch and pipe issue you’ve got next to Hwy 55.,” Clayton said.

With that in the works, residents no longer raised any question about the project and the board voted unanimously to accept the first plat. While true, the construction and completion of the subdivision is nowhere near ready as the project has further steps that must come forward for board approval.

“This will have to come before the board two more times,” Emblar said back in May. “One being with the engineering plat, which will have all of the comments made by the planning board and that the town may put on it. They will need to address that and those are the actual engineering drawings that it would be constructed by.

“Then, if the world was a perfect place, this same plan would have some additional information put on and it would be recorded as the final plat. And so, we’ll get to review it again for the engineering plan and again for the final plat before allowing it to be recorded.”