Kenilworth community gears up to oppose Caledonia Apartments

Here’s part of an email going around, asking Kenilworth community residents to come out to Asheville City Council’s meeting Tuesday and fight the proposed construction of a new apartment complex:

URGENT – City Council meeting 

THIS TUESDAY, Sept 28th, 6PM

City Hall, 2nd Floor, City Council Chambers

The proposed Caledonia Apartments– two buildings (100 units) on 6.45 acres at Caledonia and Finalee– will be heard by City Council THIS Tuesday night.   

Kenilworth speakers will address our concerns:  Safety, Traffic, Density, Open Space,  Storm runoff, and Neighborhood character.

Can you come, please?  We need a large neighborhood presence at this meeting to coax City Council to listen to us. Please bring your friends — development issues are important to all City residents.

If you want to speak at this meeting, please arrive by 4:30.

 Birdseye view of huge proposed Caledonia Apartments

 This proposed project is approximately 960 feet long and 130 feet tall!

The actual building height is 84 feet from an FFE of the parking garage, with 29 feet of roof, and a 15-35 foot retaining wall below.  All of this means 128-148 feet of building as seen from Biltmore Village. That’s huge!

The rear retaining wall will essentially act as a massive dam on the hillside, with only 3 outlets. With an inch of rain, the roofs of the 2 buildings alone would accumulate 20,300 gallons of water. This does not include the driveways or the entire hillside above the buildings, whose rain accumulation will also all have to funnel through these 3 outlets (approximately 116,500 square feet total).

In a “Rain Event” (which we have all seen many times), this is a potentially very dangerous hazard on this very steep slope. Actual engineering of potential run-off must be a major part of due diligence.