After leaving a Summit County Council hearing in August with doubts about whether the Discovery CORE development could ever appease the council enough to get approved, developers returned last week and got the final OK to build 105 houses near Summit Park.
The proposed Discovery CORE project encompasses 70 acres South of Kilby Road and the Weilenmann School of Discovery and is one of the only developments to navigate the county’s CORE program which gives a development additional density in exchange for building workforce housing.
At the meeting in August, the county council told project manager Glen Lent that the calculations they decided to use to measure the allowable density only provided for 105 units. Lent told the county he needed between 140-168 units to make the project affordable.
“We worked really hard to reduce the number of units and the buildable area,” said Lent. “We reduced a large piece of the development that was in the viewshed and made it so that 80 percent of the development is open space.”
According to county planner Kimber Gabryszak, the county council responded favorably to the reduction in units and preservation of the viewshed, resulting in a four to one vote for approval despite a lack of public transit.
“The council gave them a waiver on the transit required of CORE developments because it was the council that decided to change the transit plan and reduce bus service to the area,” said Gabryszak. The council had previously used the development’s missing transit service as a reason for denial.
Coming on the heels of approving a rezone for the 1,100 unit Silver Creek Village, this is the second high-density development containing workforce housing the council has approved in the past two weeks.
The development will feature about 42 workforce units and 63 market-rate units, according to Lent.
“Despite the current economy, I think there is a big demand for a development like this,” he said. “This price point has been unavailable in the area and the county’s need assessment survey, as well as one we conducted, said there is a real pent-up demand for housing that is affordable.”
Lent added the affordable housing will cost around $175,000 to $275,000 and market rate units will probably sell for $300,000 to $400,000.
“We are going to make it so the development connects to the all the trails in the area,” he said. “We will use our open space to connect to the Mid Mountain Trail and add on to the Millennial Trail so it extends all the way to the Timberline Development.”
Some neighbors have expressed concern over the possible increase in traffic on Kilby Road the development would cause as well the disruption to wildlife in the area.
Developers plan to break ground on the project by next summer.