With its Worship Center/Gym now completed and in use, Triad Baptist Church’s focus shifts toward completing the planned purchase of 92 acres behind its current campus on South Main Street.

The next step: rezoning the land from business and residential (HB-S, RS-12 & RS-20) to institutional and public special use (IP-S). The rezoning request and the church’s site plan for a complex of lighted sports fields, parking and access road, and concessions goes before the Kernersville Planning Board Oct. 13 for initial review.

The Kernersville Board of Aldermen would then review and vote Nov. 4 on the rezoning and the athletic fields plan. The athletic fields will use about 15 acres, or 16.3 percent of the overall 92-acre site.

Because of the special-use zoning classification, Triad would also need to present site plans and get Kernersville approval for all future development on the land.

Wyndfall residents briefed

Dwight Moore, the deacon over the church’s Building and Grounds committee, and Aden Stoltzfus and Steve Coley, from Triad’s New Building team, briefed members of the Wyndfall Homeowners Association Sept. 2 about the church’s plans for the development which shares a border with the neighborhood.

It was the church’s second meeting with residents. The first was with those owned property directly adjacent to the land; the Sept. 2 meeting expanded that group to residents who live along Hill-N-Dale Drive, Wyndfall Drive, and Woodland Point Drive. Residents were most concerned about traffic and noise from the fields.

Stoltzfus and Moore told them that the church shared those concerns and did not want to open up access from the land to the neighborhood’s Hill-N-Dale Drive either. However, they said Kernersville requested the connection be made to Hill-N-Dale through a locked, gated access point and vehicle turnaround in emergencies. Only emergency personnel would have keys to unlock the gate.

In addition to the natural border that exists between the neighborhood and property, Stoltzfus said that the church’s site plan adds another border of trees and other plantings between the property and neighborhood, moves the fields as far away from the neighborhood as the land’s features allowed, and uses lighting designed to cut down on glare.

Stoltzfus and Moore added that the speakers of the field’s sound system would be directed away from the neighborhood while security cameras would help safeguard against vandalism and also monitor access.

All vehicle access to the property will be made from the end of Whicker Road but the church is considering a walking/golf cart access path to the field’s from the church’s lower parking lot.

Triad’s site plan shows lighted baseball, softball and a combination soccer, track and field and football field, plus a practice area, concessions, parking and the Whicker Road access.

A representative of Meridian Realty, which is managing the family’s sale of the land, said housing developers only had been willing to buy small parts of the property. He said the church’s use is much less intense than high-density and lower-cost residential housing, making the development a good neighbor to have.

“The bottomline is we want to continue to be good neighbors,” Moore said, noting the church’s Upward sports and other programs that benefit the community and its track record for campus development. As the meeting closed, a resident thanked the church for its transparency, and for keeping residents informed. He said he felt much more comfortable after hearing about the church’s development plans and asking questions.

Stoltzfus said that the church turned its focus back to the property’s purchase and began talking to Kernersville planners in May once the Worship Center/Gym project was nearly complete (it opened in June).

At first, the church thought the property would not have to be rezoned but learned earlier this month that rezoning would be required to the same classification as the rest of the campus. So far, the soil and other tests of the land have turned up no issues that would affect its development.

Land purchase timeline and financing

Last spring, the church’s Executive Leadership Team authorized the church to put $10,000 in earnest money toward a possible purchase of the land after members gave the proposal the go-ahead, and the church entered into an agreement to purchase the property.

Then in October 2013, the New Building team asked members to approve delaying the land closing from March to December 2014 so they could focus on getting the Worship Center/Gym project online.

Members overwhelmingly approved the delay. Since then, the church has been making interest-only payments for a portion of the sale price to the owners during the pre-closing period.

At the time members approved the extension, Dennis Roberts, executive administrator (church and academy operations), said that the church’s relationship with its new bank, Bank of North Carolina, was too new for the bank to consider adding the land purchase price to the loan covering the Worship Center/Gym construction.

However, since then, members already have contributed 52 percent of the total they pledged to give in three years to the “Not Without You” fundraising campaign for the building, and Roberts said the bank/church relationship has matured.

As a result, he said Triad has developed a financing plan for the land purchase with lending from the bank and other funding sources to share with members later this fall pending the rezoning.