Deals, Deceptions, Delays, and Developers

Aubrey Shepherd has an important blog entry about an agenda item on next week’s meeting of the Fayetteville City Council. The official city site says simply, “An ordinance repealing and replacing Ordinance No. 4971, extending the expiration date for R-PZD 04-1307 (Aspen Ridge) to June 29, 2008. Back in 2004, Shepherd warned that “so many details of this plan deserve further study and public airing that approving the Aspen Ridge PZD in the winter 2004-2005 appears to be a potential major mistake.” Now in late 2007, he explains that the proposal to extend the time for the project demands even more answers to some additional questions that no one else seems to be asking.

Two years ago this month, Developer Hank Broyles staged a grand groundbreaking of the Aspen Ridge project with buffo publicity and fawning news coverage from the local media, and Mayor Dan Coody was there on center stage. "We are very pleased to see this development occur,” boasted the Mayor, “Not only is it a stimulus for other area economic development, bringing tremendous value to the region, but also it will solve some existing environmental problems.” It didn’t quite work out that way.

Shepherd details the broken promises and environmental destruction of the past two years, including the treeless trail, increased noise, the scrapping of promised rain gardens, silting of Town Branch Creek, the filling of wetlands, removal of the topsoil from the proposed park land of less than an acre, and denuding the natural tree canopy. Read it. And be prepared for his next installment.

Fayetteville has a big mud hole at Sixth and Hill. The City Council has a big decision to make—whether to take additional risks by trusting new promises, or whether to demand immediate corrections before even considering an extension of the project. Either way, Mayor Coody should be more careful before trusting developers to keep their word and endorsing a project built on empty promises. That goes, no matter who puts their name on a project but especially so for some developers who have misled us in the past.