Gaston Outside, City Version: Rewarding Threats to Clear-Cut Woods by Giving those Threatening a Shopping Center
Notes from Gastonia Planning Commission Meeting, August 3, 2017 Despite assurances from their first meeting with neighbors in January that they would do a commercial project and help with flood control, Pearson Properties made clear early on Thursday that flooding was not their concern. Charlie Pearson gave the initial presentation for the developer and said that “neighbors had purchased into floodplains and that floodplains flood.” I pointed out that last year’s Commission spent a long time during the Academy Sports review talking about increased flooding concerns. Seventy minutes of our required neighbors meeting with the developer had been filled with people worried about greater frequency and intensity of flooding. We were worried that we did not know any details of Pearson’s solution that they proposed to us and city councilmen - the building of a retention pond of unknown dimensions on the city-owned land upstream and buffering the Lineberger parcel...