Residents of the long-standing Meadowbrook neighborhood, with its network of lakes, are concerned about a potential 77-unit townhome development being approved right next door off of Old Glory Road.

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By Jim Buice

For the Clemmons Courier

As the former president of the Meadowbrook HOA, Paul Whitener has seen lots of changes over the years in the huge neighborhood wedged in between U.S. 158 and Lewisville-Clemmons Road, including mounting concerns in a community with multiple lakes.

So with the introduction of a potential 77-unit townhome development next door off Old Glory Drive in a public hearing at village hall during a June council meeting in village hall, Whitener, who is still an HOA board member, and a full house of other Meadowbrook residents were on hand to express their feelings about stormwater along with traffic.

However, despite similar focus on stormwater, traffic issues and wanting to find out more from NCDOT about medians, signal lights and future timelines on Lewisville-Clemmons Road at the Old Glory Road intersection prompted the council to ask for a continuance until the approaching meeting on Monday, July 14, at 6 p.m.

Meanwhile, Whitener and others in attendance heard Andy Dreyfuss, representing Nova Triad Homes and the proposed Hidden Oaks subdivision project featuring 3-bedroom, 2½-bath homes in groups of two to three selling for $425,000 to $450,000, give more details.

That included adding 575 feet of a north-south connector road to begin the process of a connection from Neudorf Road to a signalized light. Also, they are proposing widening Old Glory Road at the Lewisville-Clemmons Road intersection to provide dedicated left- and right-turn lanes.

Then, Dreyfuss, turning to stormwater, said that Nova Triad Homes also will place a large 100-year storm event wet pond to prevent runoff to the surrounding lakes.

When it was his turn to speak, Whitener first offered a recap of the deteriorating stormwater situation for Meadowbrook, including the community being required by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to have an emergency action plan assessment done that cost the neighborhood $18,000.

“We have paid that, and the assessment shows that the dams not only affect us, they effect everything to the Yadkin River,” he said. “That includes going through Tanglewood down to Clemmons West. One-hundred year storms come way sooner than 100 years now. That is not a new news flash. 

“We feel like with 77 homes over 14 acres to be cleared, that’s going to make this way worse. It’s going to cost our neighborhood about $40,000 to fix the one dam. They’re ours. They’re our responsibility. We don’t have the money, but we’re working on that.

“And it’s going to go to a very well-designed pond. Once that pond is full, it’s going to go somewhere. It’s going to head over to the Bingham property, and then it’s going to flow into Lake Dale. Now what you may not know is just east of Lake Dale, so between Lewisville-Clemmons and Lake Dale, there’s an approximately 12-foot ravine that has been created from all of the runoff from Lewisville-Clemmons Road and from the Smith property. That is only going to get bigger and worse.”

Tom O’Brien, who is a contractor and the Meadowbrook voluntary HOA president, agreed with most of the crowd that the actual design of the Old Glory project is fine, but the petitioner is “coming into the original sin of too much stormwater coming into our lakes.”

O’Brien said he understands that the Smith family wants to sell the property but questioned why Meadowbrook can’t get some help from Clemmons or Forsyth County.

“They’re our lakes,” he said. “They’re private lakes. We own them. Does that mean we dam them up? What happens if we just let them go? They get breached. Do you want them? What are you going to do with them? Do you want to throw a pipe through them? We’re just searching for answers. We really need some help.”

Cindy Bell, who is the Meadowbrook voluntary HOA vice president, said she has lived in the neighborhood since 1998 and that her husband is a second-generation owner. She talked about the impact from a storm in 2017 and then again in 2020 when four inches of rain fell in a short period of time.

“That’s a lot, but in the scheme of what it can do now, it’s not really a lot,” said Bell, who added this is a very serious problem and asked for help and a partnership with the village. “I mean, look at Helene. And that rain, it devastated the lake system in our neighborhood. It flowed over the dam on Bridgewater. The Sheriff’s Office was out there and had to stop people from going through there because it was so deep. If our dams were to breach, it could really affect the houses in other neighborhoods.”

Another resident, Hope Harris, said that her parents moved to Meadowbrook in 1964, and that she was born three years later. 

“I’m back in my family home,” she said. “So I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen all the developments come through in the village and promises that were made that we’d be beautiful. So what do we have now — a big piece of asphalt. So the level of trust is gone. My folks came and invested in Clemmons and lived here, and now we need to try to protect it.

“The Planning Board (which voted against the proposal), after they heard everything, realized that it was just the cart before the horse. We’ve got a traffic problem on L-C Road. It will exacerbate that. We have a storm problem. We’re going to make that worse.”

Later in the public hearing during rebuttals, Dreyfuss stated that only about 4 percent of the runoff from the Smith property would be added to the drainage basin.

“Most of it is coming from a wide, wide swath of territory, actually almost all the way up to I-40 and as far east as Stadium Drive,” he said. “So it’s a massive basin that was developed well before 2007. And the stormwater has gotten much better, and the rules are much tougher. As council member (Michelle) Barson mentioned, you’ve got the toughest ordinance in the state of North Carolina, and we will do our best.”

Dreyfuss then pivoted to traffic, saying that he was advised that NCDOT has decided not to put medians on Lewisville-Clemmons Road at both the Old Glory Road intersection and the Cook Avenue intersection.

“I think it’s relevant that the state is going to spend $74 million to improve traffic flow (on Lewisville-Clemmons Road),” he said, “and they deemed it was OK to take the lefts off of Old Glory.”

Meanwhile, Tony Smith, who now lives in Raleigh, said that his aging family simply wanted to develop the property into something upscale that would be appreciated by Clemmons and the surrounding communities.

“My grandfather moved here from Davie County in the early 1920s,” he said. “When the Sprinkle property, which is the parcel we’re speaking of, came on the market, the depression had started to hit, and he borrowed funds and purchased the property. It’s been in our family 96 years.”

And now its immediate future will be decided Monday night.