Council rejects proposal for student housing
By Bertrand M. Gutierrez
JOURNAL REPORTER

The Gateway student-housing project is dead.

The Winston-Salem City Council rejected last night the $17 million project proposed by Place Properties Inc., after an hour of charged debate between an Atlanta developer and members of local historic-neighborhood groups.

Issues centered on a long list of concerns, including the project’s effect on traffic, property values, flooding and a large tract of wooded area in the Gateway, which is surrounded by the West Salem, Washington Park and Happy Hill neighborhoods.

But the deepest concerns were that the project seemed prone to deteriorating into a rooming house with transient residents and that the project was vastly different from the one submitted in 2004. That plan, which had been supported by neighborhood groups, had called for an elementary school in a 1.5-story building. The new plan called for two four-story buildings with 320 bedrooms.

Jeff Githens, a developer with Place Properties, had asked for approval to change the 2004 plan, but only one council member, Evelyn Terry, supported his request. Before Council Member Wanda Merschel voted, she recalled discussions 10 years ago about how the Gateway was supposed to be developed.

“If somebody were to ask me, ‘OK, in 10 years, what would you suggest to continue to kick-start that development,’ this type of use would not show up anywhere on the radar,” Merschel said.

Several residents hammered the project, but it has been supported by some residents, planning officials and a key UNC system official. Harold Martin, the senior UNC vice president, sent a letter to Mayor Allen Joines and the Winston-Salem City Council last month to express his support for the project.

“The Gateway could not be better located to serve the growing needs of the citizens and institutions of higher education in the southeastern area of Winston-Salem,” Martin, a former chancellor of Winston-Salem State University, said in the letter.

The request by Place Properties to build the housing project comes about a year after the city council had several meetings and discussions before changing the city’s laws to deter rooming houses from cropping up.

Critics of the plan said that although the developer was portraying the project as a type of multifamily housing, it was really just a rooming house. Part of the problem is that the city’s development guidelines don’t have a definition for a project with such student-style rooms and common areas.

“I purposely have called this a rooming house because that is what it is,” said Council Member Molly Leight, who recommended that the council deny the project. Leight represents the ward in which the project would have been built.

When Githens was asked what his next move would be, he said “no comment.” He has to wait two years before he is allowed to ask for a rezoning or to change the site plan, officials said, but he could still build the 1.5-story elementary school that was approved in 2004.

In other business, the city council approved a law governing electronic signs. The new law has a grandfather clause that gives owners of existing electronic signs 15 years to comply. Existing signs may change only once every eight seconds.

New electronic signs are limited to change messages once every two hours. Existing scrolling signs are allowed, but only for 15 years.