Jacksonville council approves 169.92-acre Blue Creek annexation and rezoning after heated public comment

Jacksonville City Council voted to annex about 169.92 acres along Blue Creek Road and Pony Farm Road and to adopt city zoning for the tract, despite prolonged public opposition focused on traffic safety, school capacity and the scale of proposed development. The action included establishing a base district that designates roughly 17 acres as corridor commercial and the remainder as Residential Multifamily High Density (RMF HD), and approving a planned development residential (PD-R) master plan with an added condition that apartments be excluded.

Developer representatives and staff said the project is already permitted at the county level and that municipal annexation primarily affects whether homes and businesses will receive city services such as sewer, water and street maintenance. Jason Houston, representing the applicant, said the project will provide sewer access tied to the Southwest Regional Lift Station and cited a 2024 DOT traffic count of about 5,700 average daily trips on Blue Creek Road to argue the corridor has capacity for growth. "We are prepared to move forward with the county planning. Either way this is developing," Houston said, urging the city to "get on the train" to manage growth collaboratively.

Opponents told council the volume and timing of development will overwhelm local roads and schools and that many residents who live near the tract lack ownership status and thus limited formal say in satellite annexations. Representative Shepherd, who said he has worked on transportation issues in Raleigh, criticized satellite annexation as a process that can bypass local residents' input and warned that "the road cannot handle the traffic" and that state transportation funds are limited. Tim Parker, a Blue Creek Road resident, urged the council to vote no, saying "It's bad for everybody out here." Other speakers cited prior DOT findings, school overcrowding and the planning board's earlier recommendation against dense multifamily zoning.

City staff and councilors emphasized process protections that remain ahead of construction: developers must complete site plans, Traffic Impact Analyses (TIAs) and obtain Technical Review Committee sign-offs before final approvals. Staff said TIAs can require turn lanes, signals or phased improvements tied to the developer; city transportation staff noted signalization projects can cost in the low hundreds of thousands to several hundred thousand dollars depending on complexity and that DOT and state discretionary funding are commonly pursued for larger items. Ryan King (planning) and other staff also said the applicant amended the PD-R to remove requests outside the city's Unified Development Ordinance and added a 10-foot vegetative buffer along portions of the periphery to address neighboring concerns.

Council adopted the annexation, the base rezoning and the PD-R with the apartments exclusion by voice vote. The transcript records a voice vote but does not include a roll-call tally. Next steps for the project include finalization of the PD-R's master plan documents, submission of traffic analyses and site plans to the city's review process, and any mitigation measures identified in those studies.