On April 5th the Transportation and Connectivity Board unanimously denied the Aura project. Aura proposes a very car centric project of 90% rental housing with a total of 650 parking spaces shown on the above Trinsic’s map in yellow, immediately adjacent to a transit stop!
The Board gave these reasons for denying the application:
- The development does not reflect the goals of the Central West Small Area Plan.
- The development does not meet the transit priority goals of the Town due to the number of parking spaces and the increase in single occupancy vehicle trips.
- The project will exacerbate existing pedestrian and bicycle safety issues due to the increase in traffic on Estes Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., and thus is not in line with the Road to Zero pedestrian safety goals of the Town.
- The traffic impact analysis and the Town-wide traffic model do not reflect the current reality and lived experience of drivers on Estes Drive, nor do these tools take a holistic view of traffic on Estes Drive, including the future development of other surrounding parcels.
- The traffic model (predicting future traffic on Estes Drive) needs to be validated.
- The Estes Drive site access is a major safety hazard and should be right-in-right-out.
A group of Estes Neighbors spoke and Transportation Board members conducted a very thoughtful discussion. The chair mentioned at the end of the meeting that there were still 31 people hanging on as virtual meeting observers, and that was more she said than had attended their meetings all last year.
Board member Rudy Juliano (Coker Hills resident) questioned the appropriateness of the application requesting OI-3 , a use reserved for office, institutional and service. He said the applicant is asking for a huge exemption on the basis that this is a mixed use development that fits the Comprehensive Plan, which it is not. Rudy pressed the point that Aura was not in fact a mixed use project at all but was 98% residential and only 2% commercial.
Estes Neighbors wrote a letter to the Transportation and Connectivity Board describing their major concerns here. They also wrote a letter to Chuck Edwards, the DOT District Engineer for Orange County, describing traffic concerns.
Letter to Chuck Edwards, District Engineer, letter.Chuck Edwards
Letter to Transportation and Connectivity Board
https://estesneighbors.org/open-letter-to-the-transportation-and-connectivity-committee/
https://estesneighbors.org/open-letter-to-the-transportation-and-connectivity-committee/
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