Morrisville Town Center Plan - 2007

Chapter 1: Existing Conditions

lack of pedestrian facilities such as sidewalks and safe road and railroad crossings makes pedestrian safety and access issues of concern throughout much of the project area. The southern portion of the Town Center includes significant existing and potential parkland, with Wake County’s Cedar Fork District Park and a natural area owned by the Town of Morrisville, as well as additional natural lands and several historic sites that were significant in the skirmish that was fought in Morrisville at the end of the Civil War (See Map 2). These areas provide emeralds on a necklace of green space that includes Lake Crabtree and Umstead State Park to the east and the Morrisville Community Park, several Town of Cary parks, and the American Tobacco Trail to the west. With the Indian Creek Greenway under development heading north, the Town Center lies at a future greenway crossroads, both at a community scale and for the Triangle region as a whole.

Works yard, and other existing and planned town offices, as well as the Hindu Temple on Aviation Parkway. Together, these facilities provide a strong civic orientation to the Town Center, and help to bring many residents into this area on a regular basis. Together, these natural and built features provide cornerstones that can help make the project area a major center of community that provides a diversity of services and amenities to Morrisville residents and visitors alike. Market Conditions The design team retained by the Town included a professional real estate andmarket economist with considerable experience assessing the market potential of Main Street-style projects. Below is a summary of this review of existing market conditions in the Town Center area, and the opportunities for appropriate new development in the near future. The full report is included in Appendix 4. The following are general findings from a market reconnaissance and inventory of existing uses within the Town Center study area. Town Center: The town center currently has residential and civic functions, but only a few business uses. As such, the area is not definable as a “business district” in the traditional sense of a commercial town center. The town center also lacks identity and presence because of the lack of building massing and any sense of scale. Key uses include residential, retail & service, office, and civic. Altogether, the Town Center currently includes about 900 homes that are built or under construction. In addition, it includes about 85,000 square feet of civic and institutional space, 150,000 square feet of retail and office space, and about 11,000 square feet of warehouse and industrial space.

The Town Center is also a hub of civic activity, with a number of Town facilities, the Chamber of Commerce, and the First Baptist Church all located within close proximity to one another (see Map 2). In addition to Town Hall, the project area also is home to the Police Station, Fire Station #1, the Public A deer grazes in a meadow south of Morrisville-Carpen- ter Road, evoking Morrisville’s rural past even as the community sprouts new subdivisions and commercial developments. (Photo: S. Sugg, Town of Morrisville)

Peripheral Areas:

Just outside of the

10 │ Town Center Plan

January 2007