Townhomes on 98

Chad Schmidt, Assistant Online editor

How would it feel to have strangers staring into your house from dawn to dusk?

The Wake County Board of Commissioners has approved the building of three-story townhomes off of the 98 bypass. These homes will be directly in the backyards of the neighboring homes on Pineview Estates and Tyler Run.

My house in Pineview is two-story, so these closely neighboring buildings would have the ability to look down into my windows and disrupt my family’s privacy, and in the event we decide to sell our home, the property value is set to decrease due to these townhomes.

There are many other possible ways to build new homes for people than this. Three story townhomes are not necessary, nor is it proper to be able to look into pre-existing homes.

I, along with my parents and many of the members of our neighborhood, went to three town commissioner meetings to attempt to prevent these from being built. Initially, the commissioners appeared sympathetic, but the contractor was persistent.  The commissioners were unable to find any legal issue with the building of these townhomes.

An alternative to this would be building the homes to be two stories and not three. Also, a simple solution would be to leave the large tree-line buffer we have between our homes and the 98 bypass. Either of these would lessen the effect of privacy disruption on the Tyler Run neighborhood.