RIVER BEND, N.C. (WNCT) — The Town of River Bend’s planning board has voted to recommend the approval of a rezoning request for a new housing development.

Matthew Hook is the entitlements manager for Ellis Developments Group. He said right now, the proposal for which types of homes to put in the development is still in its early stages.

“With this PDR, it comes with a certain specifics for density and what we can and can’t put there,” Hook said.
“The single-family is only going to be single-family. The multi-family areas, the zoning allows for apartments, it allows for condos, it allows for townhouses. We don’t want to do most of that, we want to add a couple of townhouses there. Just to kind of add a little variety to the neighborhood.”

Hook said the development company is considering environmental factors.

“There are restrictions for environmental purposes, water and sewer — we have to make sure that the town of River Bend, can handle whatever is proposed in the site plan, so there’s a lot of details that still need to be worked out,” Hook said.

Some River Bend residents are opposing the proposal. Jeff Weaver has been a River Bend resident for 10 years.

“This section of River Bend has a certain feel to it, and they’re trying to rezone it and change the feel that everyone bought their house in this area for,” Weaver said. “From just standing out here, it’s quiet, there’s not a lot of traffic on the roadways. I have three small children that can play in the street currently, cause the traffic is not excessive.”

“You’ve got the traffic, you got the noise, you got the pollution, the population density, it doesn’t fit our neighborhood,” said James Castranova, another River Bend resident.

The developers said they understand residents want answers as to what will be in the development.

“Step number one is when everyone gets their notification that a rezoning is taking place and they don’t necessarily know what the final product is, they don’t know how it’s gonna affect their home value,” Hook said. “There’s a lot of these questions that get brought up and some of the times we have the answers and some of them we don’t have answers yet.”

A public hearing for the rezoning request will take place July 28 at 6 p.m.