Cary Park Commercial to Residential

[dhyatt]

There's an item on tonight's agenda (05REZ10 - 8/11/05) that proposes to rezone ~30 acres in Cary Park from commercial to residential. This seems to be happening with more frequently, most recently with Weston. It seems like all the new urban mixed use stuff that developers used to originally get their rezonings through are showing up for rezoning and land use amendments later - often to the detriment of proposed commercial uses. Is this reflective of 'bad' land use planning or a poor business climate or both? I'm a bit confused as to whether this is good or bad...

05REZ10 (http://www.townofcary.org/depts/dsdept/P&Z/rezonings/2005cases/05-rez-10/10tcimpact.htm)

[Brent]

Hyatt, I have noticed this same phenomenon (it's also symptomatic of the common phenomenon of ignoring these area plans that we put so much time into generating but then throw them out the window whenever a new individual proposal comes in).

So if the area plans were "about right" in terms of the mix of uses, why so many big changes in uses, and why are nearly all of them changing from commercial/office to residential?

These result in more and more population growth without local jobs.