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DURHAM -- A month after coming within one vote of blocking the project's financing, the Durham Planning Commission on Tuesday unanimously urged elected officials to rezone part of the Rolling Hills site.
The 12-0 advisory vote targeted 7.5 acres fronting Lakewood Avenue, including the land at the corner of Lakewood and South Roxboro Street. It clears the way for the City Council to vote on the zoning in the next few weeks.
City officials and developers hope to make the acreage the site of the Rolling Hills project's first phase, with up to 120 units of new housing.
The proposed rezoning -- which would wipe from the books plans for an earlier, failed attempt to develop the site -- would allow the project to include commercial space and require developers to follow Durham's new downtown design standards, city/county planners said.
Planning Commission members said city officials had done a better job of preparing for Tuesday's vote than they had last month, when they asked the board to label as blighted Rolling Hills and the adjoining Southside neighborhood.
Officials also saw to it that people from the steering committee set up to help guide the redevelopment effort attended Tuesday's hearing.
The advance effort paid off. "We need to get behind this project and support it," Planning Commission county delegate Wendy Jacobs said. "Lakewood Avenue is the perfect place for this kind of residential and commercial mixture."
One of the five members who last month voted against the blight designation, city delegate Harry Monds, said he changed his mind after officials assured him there wouldn't be any indiscriminate use of the city's eminent-domain powers.
The project's leading opponents, Fayetteville Street shopping center owners Larry and Denise Hester, have tried to stir up public fears about eminent domain and appeared last month to make inroads with Planning Commission members by highlighting the possibility.
But Assistant Planning Director Patrick Young told members Tuesday eminent domain was irrelevant to the rezoning application, as the city already owns or has optioned the entire 7.5 acres it covers.
He added that the city can't use eminent domain at all in the Rolling Hills effort until elected officials adopt a formal redevelopment plan, and even after that, the Planning Commission would have to make "a separate determination of blight for any individual structure" the city might target.
Officials aren't expecting it to come to that. They're negotiating a voluntary sale with at least one of the remaining private owners in the Rolling Hills site proper, and the Self-Help credit union has spent about $2.3 million buying up property in Southside on the open market.
The Hesters -- who spearheaded the previous, failed attempt to develop Rolling Hills -- signaled Tuesday they're still opposed to the city's efforts.
Denise Hester faulted officials for ignoring plans for the Fayetteville Street corridor drawn up by a citizens group she and her husband headed. Instead, she argued, it's pushing piecemeal development that will carve the area up in ways that "look like the continent of Africa in colonial times."
Larry Hester, meanwhile, said he believes added commercial development in the area would undermine his business. "We see our market being taken away by this development," he told commission members.
But commission members -- who could've delayed consideration of the rezoning for up to three months -- weren't buying that. They said more residents will mean more customers for neighboring businesses.
"I know there's a lot of fear around this," Jacobs said. "But even for existing property owners, the Hesters, this is going to help you."
