What Council Did With the Walk at Boone

Boone wrote its apartment rules for anybody. Anybody who teaches here, works here, wants to buy a townhouse and stay. The Walk at Boone was written for beds, 618 of them on the driving range off Beverly Heights Avenue, and on Wednesday night Boone Town Council told Landmark Properties no. The vote was 4-0, with council member Anitra Ball absent.

The 5 p.m. work session played to empty chairs. By the 6 p.m. gavel there wasn't one left. The public filled the rows, then the cushioned office chairs in the back that are set out for town staff, then the floor. The Beverly Heights neighbors came with a fire in their bellies and printed notes ready to read. Rob Holton, whose family runs a property management company on 105 Extension, sat two seats down from me with his notes handwritten on a crumpled sheet of paper, every bit as ready. Hannah Brady brought a printed copy of her petition, 1,077 signatures against the project as of Thursday morning.

"We are steering new development toward apartments that are basically for anybody," council member Adrian Tait said, and "away from student housing." Landmark needed nine exceptions to those rules. Tait found one reason for them, "to maximize the number of units," and that wasn't enough.

"I do not blame the developer at all because that's the business model that we have."

By Tait's count it was the third council meeting with the Walk at Boone in front of it. "I feel a little bit like Groundhog Day." The rules were "crafted by both this council and previous council" over "the last five or eight years," Tait said, and council wasn't going to "go down a list of 12 or 13 items" and set them aside for one project.

Those rules live in the town's Unified Development Ordinance, the document Part 2 of Who Runs Boone walked through. They cap four-bedroom units at half of a project. The revised Walk is 65.4% four-bedroom. They allow three stories. The Walk wants four, across five buildings. They set a parking ceiling of 524 spaces on this site. The Walk asked for 567. Limits like those are what Tait meant by steering.

The revision trimmed the plan without changing what it was. Landmark dropped two buildings and 24 bedrooms, then put by-the-bedroom leasing in writing for the four-story flats, with the cottages and row apartments leased by the unit.

Council member Virginia Roseman said what the rules are supposed to produce instead. Driving the state every week, Roseman passes small townhome communities going up everywhere.

"People want homes, and Boone is no different. We want homes for our people to have." - Roseman

Mayor Pro Tem Todd Carter said the plan fails the other test, getting around without a car. Carter compared it to RK Investments' Greenway Road project, which council approved, on "a walkable corridor." From this site, the walkable options are "Papa John's and Zaxby's, that's about it."

Roseman, whose position hadn't moved since July, made the motion finding the rezoning inconsistent with Boone Next, the town's comprehensive plan. Council then found denial reasonable and in the public interest, citing traffic, safety on the neighborhood's smaller streets, and walkability.

The plan's answer for everybody else was ten "attainable" units, 5.6% of the total, at $1,500 to $2,200 a month, with Watauga County Schools named as a preferred employer. Brady, a former Watauga County Schools employee whose Beverly Heights street has five kids on it, set a starting teacher's $48,000 salary against the $1,500 one-bedroom. By Brady's math, rent would eat "nearly 54%" of take-home pay. Neighbor Jeff Graham called the bed cut "a mere 3.9% in beds."

Nobody on the dais said where the students go instead. App State's Boone campus enrolled 17,063 students this fall, down from 18,124 a year ago, in a town the 2020 census counted at 19,092. The Planning Commission was blunter about it in July. Chair Frank Veno said he would rather see "a less-dense development created for professionals and families" on this site, according to the commission's draft minutes, and that he doesn't think Boone is short on student housing. The commission's student representative, Myles Harrison, agreed, citing how easily he had found a place as a student. Commission member Paz-Miranda asked whether Landmark had planned for the university's falling enrollment. Holton told council enrollment is down about 2,000 since 2023-24, with 1,500 more beds coming next year.

So Boone has said, twice now, that it wants homes on this land and not beds. It hasn't said where the beds should go.

Nine people spoke on the case, eight in the room and one online. Nobody spoke in favor. Most had done this before, and Brady called it a third time at the podium. Ben Miller has lived in Beverly Heights since the mid-1960s, "right across the street from the driving range." By Paula Ward's count, six families there go back more than 55 years, and five of the residents are in their 80s. Ward, who grew up in the neighborhood, pointed to the packet's photo of the proposed bus route.

"It shows the corner of my mom's yard. A bus really isn't going to fit through there."

"I know of no one who is in favor of this proposal," said Chris Thaxton, president of the University Village Property Owners Association.

Landmark never made its pitch. Its team sat in the room for questions, and nobody asked any. Its attorney spoke once, in the middle of the motion, to object that the public got to speak again and the applicant didn't. Town attorney Allison Meade answered that "there's not a right of your client in the process" to a presentation once the July hearing had closed.

Nothing apartment-sized goes on that land without coming back through the same fight. Planning staff said on the record that no apartment complex can be built by right on the residential part of the site. The strip closest to 105 Extension already allows shops up to 5,000 square feet, offices, or a grocery store.

The last public comment came in online, from Chris Brady, who lives just above Beverly Heights. He had one concern nobody had raised.

"Where am I supposed to hit golf balls and where am I supposed to sled in the winter time?"

The room laughed.

Mayor Dalton George took the last word on the item. A lot of people had written in about wildlife, George said, and green isn't always the same thing as good for it. "The driving range is not necessarily the best place for wildlife."

Tait left one door open. Council can argue the details of its rules, Tait said, but not ignore them "until we really rewrite those rules." For now, the rules held. Whether the rewrite makes room for 17,000 students is the next fight.