You may have read the recent letter to the editor (printed below) about a last-minute attempt by a developer to add 2 farms to the Centreville growth area that would allow 700 homes.  The Town and the County will have to consider this request.

 
Letter to the Editor:

The Centreville Planning Commission and a Citizen’s Advisory group spent nearly two years carefully determining the optimum growth boundary and greenbelt that would accommodate growth in our Town.  They ultimately decided that an expansion of our growth boundary established by the Town’s 1998 Comprehensive Plan and the County’s 2002 Comprehensive Plan was not needed.

As reported on the Citizens for Greater Centreville website and in the newspapers recently, a developer now wants to expand our growth area so 700 houses can be built on two farms south of Town instead of the 24 houses that would be allowed under County zoning.  Also, an historic farmhouse (the John Cannon Yellow House) and 18th century granary on one of the farms apparently will not be saved under the developer’s plan.

If the farms in question are added to our growth area as proposed, there will be no mention of workforce housing, purple pipes, open space, additional sewer capacity, trails, 300-foot buffers, or any other of their commitments in the Comprehensive Plan. The farms will just become a different color block on a map.

There is also no obligation for this or any other developer to provide the above-mentioned features under our current zoning and subdivision regulations once the farms are included in the growth area.

This is exactly what happened in Northbrook. The Town was promised a golf course community with 45 homes, but instead we ended up with a development of 600 homes due to changing economic conditions.  In this case, the potential exists for over 1200 homes to be built on the two farms if economic conditions should change.

I encourage the Town and County Planning Commissioners to reject this last-minute attempt to increase Centreville’s Growth Area.

Dan Worth

Centreville