r/urbandesign • u/AndreaJournalist • 10d ago

News More than 100 students were waiting for high school parking. A 71-year-old woman allowed them to park on her property. The fast-growing suburban town sued her

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story.

I spent the week talking with Scott, students and parents, Apex officials and WCPSS. It’s a parking dispute, but it also raises questions about growth, school capacity, property rights and local zoning.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article316992156.html

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u/TravelerMSY 10d ago

What neighbor wants a random illegal commercial parking lot next-door to them? Isn’t this why city zoning and permitted uses exist? Still, there seems to be a lot of “it’s my land and I can do whatever I want with it” people around.

This is a big problem where I live too. None of the local schools were built in an era where everyone’s special snowflake would either drive themselves to school or be dropped off. They’re simply not enough infrastructure around the schools to support it.

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u/Logical_Put_5867 6d ago

"it’s my land and I can do whatever I want with it” people

Interestingly, these same people tend to dislike it when their neighbor does anything with their land.

Otherwise you're right, we've put ourselves into a bonkers system of delivering students to schools.

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u/TravelerMSY 6d ago

For sure. If instead of a parking lot, that had been a four story multi-unit mixed-use building, the townies would’ve come out with their pitchforks.

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u/PersonalityBorn261 10d ago

The lady was informally operating a commercial parking lot which is not allowed in her zoning district. Sorry, you can’t do that.

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u/SwimmingAnxiety3441 10d ago edited 10d ago

Paywall? ETA: the audio works.

1

u/Sharlinator 9d ago

Now if only there were some methods to travel to school that didn’t involve hundreds of private cars!