SALISBURY — The Salisbury City Council approved a rezoning on Tuesday that will allow for a 216-unit apartment complex to be constructed on Julian Road.

The rezoning request came from owner Towne Creek Apartments LLC and asked for the property, located in the 600 block of Julian Road, to be rezoned from Highway Business to Highway Business with a Conditional District. The conditional district was requested to allow the company to only provide one street stub, to avoid connection with the Cloninger Collision Center to the north.

“We made this request because it’s a life-safety issue. You have, potentially, tow trucks going into the collision center and things like that and we did not want to invite that traffic through a residential community where kids are likely to be playing around a pool and a playground area. And, the fact that due to the improvements on Julian Road, it doesn’t matter whether someone exits from the collision center or our community, both of those properties you still have to turn right,” said Mark Carpenter, a representative of the applicant.

The complex in question plans to have 216 units, including one through three bedroom apartments. Carpenter said that the company chose to offer the variety of sizes so that they could provide tiered levels of affordability. The company could not commit to specific prices until the facility opens and they better understand the economic situation, but he anticipated the apartments being affordable to the majority of the community and called it workforce housing. Carpenter said that the company hired a consulting firm to conduct a market survey and provide recommendations on gaps in local offerings.

“The goal with that study and the feedback that we got from our consultant was to create different sizes, frankly, so that the pricing can be tiered and address what they refer to as holes in the market. A lot of communities only have one size and one-bedroom and maybe one size and two-bedrooms and then there’s a fairly decent-sized chunk between the rent for that one-bedroom and the rent for the two-bedroom,” said Carpenter.

He said that there will be six different sizes offered, with the smallest being approximately 700-square-foot one-bedroom apartments and the largest being approximately 1,000-square-foot three-bedroom apartments.

Senior Planner Victoria Bailiff said that campus-style developments consisting of multi-family housing are allowed by right inside of a Highway Business district. She also said that the property is designated as Activity Corridor place type in the future land-use plan. The place type includes areas along key travel corridors with pre-existing commercial developments and lists the opportunities as mixed-use redevelopment, upper-story residential, pedestrian amenities, street furnishings, public art, well-maintained sidewalks and street trees. Multi-family residential is one of the land use types included under the place type.

After the discussion, the members of the city council voted unanimously to approve the rezoning.