Orange County Commissioners voted to move forward working with the Town of Hillsborough researching the acquisition of 21 acres for a multi-use county campus.
The land is located within the Hillsborough Highway 70 and Cornelius Street Corridor and would include a new Detention Center that will replace the one in Hillsborough and a new Environment and Agricultural Center.
Four sites were considered for the new detention center but director of Asset Management Services Jeff Thompson told Commissioners Tuesday night that the Highway 70 site is the best option.
“The Highway 70 site assembly, which is recommended for continued study, offers a shared accessible infrastructure. We have water and sewer adjacent to the site. Its versatile; its efficient in location for operations for the county; it has expansion capability, and it can share infrastructure and site costs between those facilities and its supported by a staff of Hillsborough,” said Thompson.
Several residents living on adjacent properties spoke at the meeting and voiced concerns over the possible disturbance that the agriculture center and detention center will bring to their farms.
A third-generation bee keeper, Jennifer Hall, spoke of her concerns about her farm that has been in her family for generations.
“Cattle, chickens, horses- it’s a way of life that we’re trying to preserve. So we’re of course concerned. I could go on about the traffic and all of that but there are other family members that are concerned. We’re trying to keep our farm together. We’re especially worried about the safety and liability of our livestock. With folks there putting stuff over the fence and stuff such as that. So we would really like some information on this, and we humbly ask y’all to pick another site,” said Hall.
Thompson says that the plans for the campus center are in the preliminary stages but that the county will notify residents within a 1,000-foot radius of the property of any updates and will host a public information session at 5:30 PM February 6 prior to a county commissioner meeting.
“We would of course reach out to everyone interested in this project well before then. The Hillsborough public hearing and their processes on the fifteenth of February, the Planning Board, if it goes past that is on the fifteenth of March,” said Thompson.
The Hillsborough Town Commission will have to approve the request and is expected to consider the proposal in either March or April.
Photo via Orange County
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