SALISBURY — Several residents of Salisbury and the Salisbury extra-territorial jurisdiction took the opportunity on Tuesday to raise concerns about a proposed 28-acre housing development coming to Sells Road.

One of the main concerns raised by the group was the added traffic that the development, called Chatham Creek, would bring both to Sells Road as well as the roads in the Country Club Hills neighborhood.

“I’m requesting that a traffic analysis be conducted on the impact of this development to the already existing traffic problem on Sells Road. I fully realize that Sells Road is an NCDOT-maintained road. However, I believe that since we have a major traffic issue already existing on Sells Road, a portion of which is in the city, a traffic analysis should be conducted to determine the impact of the increased travel on Sells Road and the surrounding neighborhoods,” said Tim Norris, who lives nearby on Sells Road.

The property which would hold the proposed Chatham Creek is located in the 700 block of Sells Road and was annexed by the city at the Feb. 4 meeting. As it was presented at the time, the development would be a 28-acre, 94-home development of single-family homes.

The subdivision would have been allowed regardless of whether the annexation was approved or not, as the property was in the Salisbury ETJ and zoned General Residential 6, which allows for single-family residential homes to be built at six units per acre. Because there was no rezoning process necessary, the city could not require any traffic impact studies.

Karl Arthur, who lives in Country Club Hills, said that he often drops his grandson off at North Hills Christian School and a new housing development would exacerbate an already-existing traffic problem at the school.

Norris and Arthur also said that the development’s proposed connection to both Glendower Drive and Kingsbridge Road would create issues by making the two entirely residential roads a thoroughfare between Sells and Old Mocksville roads.

Leigh Ann Norris said that the neighborhood roads acting as a thoroughfare would pose an issue because of the developments coming to Old Mocksville Road, including the 246-home Oxford Downs development.

“Why will residents from Country Club Hills and Oxford Downs choose the Sells Road access? Because the city of Salisbury annexed 128 homes on Hawkinstown Road, all exiting onto Old Mocksville Road. Furthermore, the town of Spencer annexed an additional parcel with dense construction plans, all exiting to Old Mocksville Road, (which) was identified as insufficient to handle additional traffic created by developments such as Dollar General and Oxford Downs,” said Leigh Ann Norris.

No traffic analysis impact study was required by either the North Carolina Department of Transportation or the city, but Salisbury Transportation Director Wendy Brindle said that the state had performed a preliminary study a few years ago.

Brindle added that incoming Transportation Director Jared Mathis, who worked with the NCDOT before joining Salisbury, has said that the state might have funds available for the city to perform a traffic study looking at “school queuing,” where traffic backs up on a road due to a nearby school’s pickup or dropoff time. If performed, that study could indicate that upgrades to Sells Road or U.S. Highway 601 were needed, which could then be used in a request to the NCDOT for a project.

The city also currently has a project request for widening Old Mocksville Road, but the project had received a low scoring from the NCDOT and so was considered low priority, said Brindle.

“We’ll reach out to (NCDOT) and see if there is funding to take a look at (the school). We can do a study with in-house staff and provide data to (NCDOT), so we will have to work hand-in-hand with them. This is a very common problem, just from the last two years we’ve done similar things on Jake Alexander Boulevard with Isenberg and Salisbury Academy. We looked at that as one study that did not recommend improvements on Jake, but did have some recommendations for the schools themselves,” said Brindle.