200 neighbors protest plans by Dale Earnhardt’s widow to develop her vast landholdings
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A standing-room-only crowd of nearly 200 neighbors protested plans Tuesday night by Teresa Earnhardt, widow of the late NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt, to build an industrial park on 399 of her rural acres in east Mooresville.
Residents, including Rene Earnhardt, wife of Dale Earnhardt’s oldest son, Kerry, urged the Mooresville Planning Board to recommend denial of Teresa Earnhardt’s request.
The board agreed, voting 8-0 against Teresa Earnhardt’s proposed Mooresville Technology Park on former farmland between Patterson Farm Road and Rustic Road near Cabarrus County.
Board member Shaun Hooper made the motion against the request, agreeing with residents that the proposal was out of character with Mooresville’s more agricultural, less populated eastern side.
The Planning Board is an advisory panel that makes recommendations on rezoning requests to the Mooresville Board of Commissioners, which has final say. No date is scheduled for commissioners to consider the request.
Teresa Earnhardt wants to build the park off N.C. 3, also known as Dale Earnhardt Highway. The acreage is 2 1/2 miles from Dale Earnhardt Inc., Earnhardt’s longtime racing headquarters on N.C. 3 in Mooresville.
Earnhardt, who was from Kannapolis, died in a last-lap crash at the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 18, 2001.
Teresa Earnhardt was a no-show Tuesday night, instead sending Dan Brewer, the engineer for her project, to speak on her behalf.
Brewer offered few details about the types of businesses the park would welcome, saying only that distribution centers and manufacturers would not be in the mix.
Thirteen speakers denounced Teresa Earnhardt’s request. One speaker asked everyone in attendance who opposed the rezoning to stand up, and the entire crowd stood from their seats.
Speakers also included a neighboring farmer whose family has tilled the soil for generations and others who want to raise their families far from Charlotte’s tree-bulldozing growth.
“We love the rural life,” 41-year-old Evan Lockwood told the board. “People have been here for generations, and that’s what I hope for my family. We don’t want this to be another case of industry ruining farms and families.”
Lockwood bought 11 acres on Rustic Road in 2022 and built most of his family of five’s home by himself, he told The Charlotte Observer as he left the meeting after the board’s vote.
“I grew up in those woods,” Chad Johnson of Landis said. “I romped in those woods. We cannot have an industrial park out there.”
Mooresville resident Scarlett Inman said friends live near the site, and she visits there often.
”The beautiful sounds at night, the beautiful scenery we see,” Inman told the board. “This is a rural, agricultural area, and once you make that into something industrial, there’s no going back. Make it true green space, hiking trails, to honor the legacy of what Dale Earnhardt was all about.”
Earnhardt hunted on the land and cherished the setting, longtime residents told the board.
“We are a community in itself,” Patterson Farm Road resident Rene Earnhardt, Kerry Earnhardt’s wife, told the board. “We deserve to be protected and preserved ... Stand up and support the preservation of rural communities.”
“On behalf of myself and my husband, Kerry Dale Earnhardt, whose passion for the preservation of land and the conservation of wildlife was instilled by his late father, we are proud that he knows that we are continuing that legacy that he leaves behind.”
A Stop Earnhardt Industrial Park petition started on Change.org Wednesday drew at least 436 signatures in two days.
Board recommends approval of 107 homes on former farmland
Also Tuesday, by a 6-2 vote, the board recommended a rezoning for June Staton Goodman’s proposed Courtyards at Brumley Farm development on her former farmland in east Mooresville.
The development would include 107 single-story homes geared to adults 55 and older, according to plans by Mooresville-based Realco Development Corp., which has an option to buy Goodman’s land.
The homes would be on 54 acres at Oakridge Farm Highway (N.C. 150) and Wiggins Road, about 6 1/2 miles east of Lake Norman.
Goodman and Realco sued the town in Iredell County Civil Superior Court after the the Mooresville Board of Commissioners rejected a rezoning for the development in August 2023, The Charlotte Observer previously reported. Commissioners cited traffic safety, emergency response and environmental concerns, namely, the impact on streams.
Goodman and Realco later came up with a second proposed access road for emergency vehicles, and commissioners in July voted 4-to-1 to let her seek another rezoning recommendation from the Planning Board, and then another vote by the town board. No date has been set for commissioners to vote on the rezoning.
Several neighbors said the smaller-lot development would be out of character with the area and dump more traffic onto already overburdened Oak Ridge Farm Highway. The road backs up for a mile certain times of the day and wrecks are frequent, including a fatal one.
Kevin Donaldson, a Mooresville lawyer for Realco and Goodman, said state highway officials backed the project’s traffic improvement plan. Tuesday night, Goodman and Realco agreed to build a U-turn lane to further improve safety.
Board recommends approval of 78-home Lake Norman community
By a seven-to-one vote, the Planning Board also recommended a national home builder’s rezoning request be approved for 78 town homes on Langtree Road near Lake Norman.
The 15.3-acre development, called Cascadia, would have 3.84 acres of open space, including a required overlook along at least 50 percent of the shoreline, according to the developer’s rezoning application.
The developer, Mattamy Homes, is North America’s largest privately owned home builder, according to its website. The builder has opened or is near finishing 13 Charlotte-area subdivisions, including in Charlotte, Huntersville, Kannapolis, Mint Hill and Monroe.
In August, the Mooresville Board of Adjustment ruled that Mattamy Homes must open part of the shoreline of Cascadia to the public, The Charlotte Observer reported at the time.
At the time, the developer sought an exemption to the town rule that waterfront developments make at least 50% of their shoreline available to everyone. The Board of Adjustment turned down the request.
The property is located between two single-family developments, with hotels to the east and the LangTree Lake Norman mixed-use community to the southeast.
Tuesday night, four neighbors cited concerns over potential runoff onto their properties, the loss of trees and wildlife habitat, and a need for landscape buffers and re-vegetation of the cleared land.
Representatives of the builder said buffers and replanting of trees are in the new community’s interest, too, and the development would have underground drainage that wouldn’t affect neighboring properties.
The Mooresville Board of Commissioners will consider the request at a meeting to be announced.
Mayor on medical leave
In other Mooresville news, Mayor Chris Carney has taken a medical leave of absence after the death of a close family friend and his father being placed in hospice care, commissioner and mayor pro tem Eddie Dingler said at Monday’s Board of Commissioners meeting.
Carney “is committed to his public service role” and will return “as soon as possible,” Dingler said.
This story was originally published October 23, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "200 neighbors protest plans by Dale Earnhardt’s widow to develop her vast landholdings."