There's a “new owner at Pine Forest,” Planning Director Debra Ensminger reported to the Board of Commissioners during their Annual Budget Retreat on Thursday, January 19.
Who that new owner is has yet to be revealed, but Ensminger expects to meet with them on February 20, she told the Board. It was also not clear whether the "new owner" had acquired the entire development, or only portions of it.
Ensminger said she had been notified of the ownership change via and email from Hobbs-Upchurch and Associates, the Southern Pines engineering firm retained by MHK, Inc. to draw plans for Pine Forest.
She told The Times that working with a new Pine Forest developer would be like “starting at square one.”
“We thought that the developer who was developing this was going to go forward,” said Commissioner Tim Lea, who voted against the rezoning of Pine Forest back in July.
“Now, we found out that Pine Forest has been sold to another developer. Are we going to have another developer the next time we get ready to make a decision on this?”
“Why would a new owner buy?” Commissioner Nick Picerno asked. “We have not approved any water or sewer.”
It took more than two years for Florida-based MHK, Inc. to win approval of Planned Unit Development zoning for the nearly 1700 acre property that stretches north of NC Highway 211 from West Pine Middle School to West End.
Though the rezoning was approved, the Commissioners have not finalized agreements to bring county water to the property -- or related agreements that would bring wastewater from another MHK development -- the Dormie Club on NC Highway 73 -- for processing at a private wastewater treatment plant proposed for Pine Forest.
Relocating the Waste Water Treatment Facility
And it's no longer clear how that transfer of wastewater from one development to the other will work. In December, MHK met with Ensminger to discuss the possible relocation of the proposed wastewater treatment facility to the Dormie Club.
“The Dormie Club site does not permit the use of public utilities,” explained Ensminger. In other words, Dormie Club's current zoning would not allow a wastewater treatment plant on the property. “We would have to do a text amendment to the zoning ordinance and go through the process with that.”
Apparently, once Ensminger explained that process to MHK, the developer suggested they would prefer to move the wastewater plant to a different location on the Pine Forest tract than originally planned.
Commissioner Craig Kennedy said he was under the impression that the treatment facility would be moved further away from Nick’s Creek.
“Are we going to have the new owner of Pine Forest come back and ask to put a treatment facility on Pine Forest?” asked Lea. “I don’t know what the Board’s position is, but I don’t think we want two wastewater treatment plants right there across the road from each other.”
Ensminger said two waste water treatment facilities — one at Pine Forest and the other at the Dormie Club — is not currently being proposed.
Even if that were the plan, County Manager Cary McSwain said, “I don’t believe either one of them [Pine Forest or Dormie Club] alone could support the capital cost of two plants.”
Ensminger told The Times she could not predict when the proposal to relocate the wastewater plant might come before the Planning Board or Board of Commissioners.
The construction of a privately owned waste water treatment facility by a developer, no matter where it is located, would be a first in Moore County.
The rezoning of Pine Forest was approved by the Board of Commissioners in July in a three to one vote with Commissioner Larry Caddell recused and Commissioner Tim Lea casting the dissenting vote.
The Pine Forest PUD, as originally approved, was to include a maximum of 710 residential units, commercial/retail development, two eighteen hole golf courses and one nine hole short golf course.
The 1,000 acre Dormie Club Development is expected to include only 218 high-end homes arrayed around a 377-acre golf course, which is already complete. During the approval process for that development, MHK acknowledged that the soils on the property were unsuited for individual septic systems, making access to wastewater treatment essential to the success of the development.
