How will Apex grow?

Business people, town officials and residents discuss ways to attract commerce

By Wendy Lemus, Staff Writer

Like many Triangle communities, the once small town of Apex is asking itself how it’s going to deal with the growth that just keeps coming.With cities elsewhere struggling to keep jobs and people, that’s not a bad problem to have, said Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly.

“It’s often said we’re in the catbird seat here in Apex; we can be very choosy on econonic development issues,” said Weatherly, speaking at an economic development summit at the town’s community center Thursday.

The meeting was the first such joint venture between the town and the Apex Chamber of Commerce. Several residents, local business people and town officials attended.

Apex officials, aware that growth has its own set of problems, sought input on priorities as it tends to those growing pains.

The town’s ratio of residential to commercial, 81 percent to 19 percent, is too skewed toward residential, said Apex Planning Director Dianne Khin. “The main reason to have a more balanced split between nonresidential and residential uses is for tax base purposes,” Khin wrote in an e-mail. “... By having more nonresidential tax base, it essentially subsidizes the residential taxes so that citizens’ property taxes can be kept as low as possible.”

The goal, said Khin, is 60-70 percent residential and 30-40 percent nonresidential.

How to get there?

Community members brainstormed items the town should put priorities on.

Road improvements, utilities expansion and a “unified economic development vision” for the town were at the top. Other priorities identified included readying “certified sites” for prospective businesses to move in more quickly, making improvements downtown, finding more commercial land for office parks and businesses, maintaining Apex’s “small town” character and streamlining the town’s development process.

Most in the room were not surprised that road improvements led the list.

Kent Jackson, Apex’s director of construction management, said the town is making progress on the Apex Peakway. It’s also working on improvements at key intersections, Salem Street and N.C. 55 and Lake Pine at U.S. 64.

Public Works Director Tim Donnelly noted the large recent but necessary expenditures , $73 million for the Western Wake Regional Wasterwater Treatment Plant, $70 million for an electric utility substation and $12 million for water treatment plant expansion. “Those things have to occur for economic development” to happen, Donnelly said.

He encouraged attendees to get behind the wastewater treatment plant project because he said Apex is running out of sewer capacity.

One thing Apex will need to face if it wants to increase its business sector is the potential for offering taxpayer-financed incentives. Holly Springs recently gave Novartis a multimillion dollar package to put a vaccination plant in town.

In a “pros and cons” format, Ernie Pearson of the Sanford Holshouser Business Development Group was invited to speak on the matter along with Justice Robert F. Orr, who is currently running for governor.

Pearson said incentives “are now a routine front-end question” for businesses looking at new locations. “This is somethng we gotta do to compete,” he said.

Orr’s word of advice was “just say no.” He likened incentives to “governmental subsidies of selected businesses ... a process that is fundamentally unfair.”

Weatherly asked the guest speakers about public disclosure in the process of recruiting businesses. Often negotiations are done behind closed doors, with companies demanding not to have their names announced until a decision has been made.

“People paying taxes have a right to know” what’s going on, Orr said.

Pearson said all his dealings with companies and governments have complied with open meetings and public records laws. Apex, Pearson said, “won’t face the reality until you’ve got a company [looking] anyway.”

Other action

Also at the Economic Development Summit in Apex:

>Apex has had the largest extraterritorial jurisdiction ever granted in Wake County, nearly 9,000 acres largely to the west and south. (See map: apexnc.org/docs/ plan/etjRequest.pdf.) The town will do a six- to eight-month study to look at land uses, transportation routes and potential areas for parks and schools. It has been 29 years since Apex had a comprehensive ETJ request approved by Wake County. ETJ gives a municipality the right to apply its zoning and subdivision ordinances to nearby properties that are not within the municipality and not incorporated in another municipality.

>Phase four of Beaver Creek Crossing has been approved. This phase is located on the north side of U.S. 64, across the highway from the movie theater. It will include 242,000 square feet of retail, 40,000 square feet of office, 18,000 square feet of residential and 46 townhomes.

>Broadstone Station, northwest of the U.S. 1 and N.C. 55 intersection, has been approved and will include 350,000 square feet of retail, 90,000-square-foot hotel, 40,000 square feet of office and 288 multifamily homes.

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