Davidson Depot project off Town website...previous approval invalid

This past week it was noticed by Melissa Atherton, a regular contributor here at aShortChronicle, that the controversial Davidson Depot project no longer shows up on the Town website as an active project in the Planning Department.

Readers will remember the Davidson Depot project as the 183 unit apartment complex set to for the Metrolina Warehouse site.  Legacy problems with asbestos at the site triggered a major cleanup effort by the EPA in the surrounding neighborhood last year.

The project would have involved massive cleanup efforts on the site itself, and costs for that cleanup caused the original developer, Miller Valentine, to pull out of the effort last year.  The project was handed off to a new group, a financing company called HFF, to see if any creative options could be found to handle cleanup costs.  aShortChronicle reported on that here.  Now, it looks like that effort may have ceased as well.

When asked why the Town had taken the project off the website, Christina Shaul responded that "the original approval from 2015 is no longer valid. It’s our understanding that Miller Valentine is no longer involved in the development of the Metrolina site."  When asked further about that Shaul responded with this.  "When planning staff was conducting a review of projects, they realized that it was not approval correctly at the outset – the definition of expansion vs. redevelopment was misinterpreted. At their February 27 meeting, the mayor and board of commissioners directed staff to look into the Metrolina Warehouse site on Depot Street as a potential site for housing some of our public facilities to help with our space needs."

The only 2015 approval on the project aShortChronicle was aware of involved a preliminary site plan needed to seek the Brownfield Abatement tax credits the project was hoping to use to defray some of the cleanup costs.  Now, it would appear that approval which benefited the project was done incorrectly.

HFF the company looking at creative financing options for the original plan was contacted multiple times this past week to see if anything else was in the works.  However, the firm did not respond.  Regardless, it would appear that if this project was to go forward now, it may be starting back at square one.