MORGANTOWN — The Monongalia County Commission is stepping in to ensure stormwater improvements remain part of a development project in a historically flood-prone area.
In a three-way agreement with the Morgantown Utility Board and RDR Properties LLC (Biaforas Inc.), the commission agreed to provide up to $120,000 of an estimated $320,000 stormwater upgrade.
MUB will also contribute up to $120,000 and RDR will provide $80,000 as well as some project engineering.
The project in question will construct eight, three-story structures containing 30 three-bedroom townhomes on 2.45 acres bordered by McCullough Avenue, Dartmouth Road and Briar Patch Lane.
The corner parcel sits along Morgantown’s municipal boundary.
Back in October, The Monongalia County Commission signed off on an amendment to the West Run Planning District zoning map to rezone 659 McCullough Ave. from R-2 (neighborhood density residential) to R-4 (high density residential).
As part of that process, neighbors expressed concerns that the development would bring more traffic into an already congested tangle of captured neighborhoods, each of which is just outside the city and therefore responsible for maintaining their own streets.
They also conceded that water runoff has become a problem as the Tanglewood, Acorn Village and Park Hills neighborhoods became encircled by development.
Scott Copen, of Cheat Road Engineering, said the developer was working with MUB on significant drainage improvements that would benefit the entire 35-acre watershed despite the subject parcel contributing a small percentage of the overall runoff.
Dave Biafora, representing the developer, noted the upgrades were ultimately completely unnecessary to the completion of the project, but were being done “because it’s the right thing to do.”
Then things started going sideways.
Monongalia County Commissioner Sean Sikora said the project had bogged down due to “unreasonable demands by one of the adjacent impacted developers” and added that “the whole project was in jeopardy of devolving into a legal nightmare.”
So, the parties went back to the drawing board, resulting in the agreement spelled out above.
“I was really glad that we took a potential tinder box and just kind of put some water on it, smoothed it out and got everyone to the table,” Commission President Jeff Arnett said. “This should really help that community. This project, along with the Popenoe Run project that’s progressing in that same general area, hopefully will address a lot of the stormwater issues that we’ve had with flooding over the past few years.”
MUB previously explained the upgrades will consist of approximately 1,000 feet of new storm sewer and will provide means of upgrading the remainder of the failing private storm sewer through the Briar Patch neighborhood in the future.
