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Barbee Farms gets support from Concord City Council

By Karen Cimino Wilson | Independent Tribune

Published: October 11, 2009

Concord City Council voted unanimously on Thursday to submit written comments to the N.C. Department of Transportation this week, supporting the realignment option for Pitts School Road that will preserve Barbee Farms and the Bonds family farms.

The N.C. Department of Transportation held a public hearing Oct. 1 regarding a $230 million project that will widen Interstate 85 from four to eight lanes between Concord Mills Boulevard and N.C. 73.

More than 150 people attended the meeting and 22 spoke. Most spoke in favor of choosing a plan that preserves the farms.

The state road project includes plans to widen Poplar Tent Road to a four-lane divided highway near Exit 52 on I-85 and to move Pitts School Road.

State Department of Transportation engineers said Pitts School Road must be moved because the state doesn't want any roads connecting to Poplar Tent Road within 1,000 feet of the expanded Exit 52.

Also, Pitts School Road contains a sharp curve near its intersection with Poplar Tent Road. Moving the road will allow the state to straighten the curve.

The state has proposed an alignment for Pitts School Road that will bisect Barbee Farms, severely disrupting its sixth-generation farming business and possibly destroying a house built in the 1920s by a Barbee.

Brent Barbee, the farm manager and son of owners Tommy and Anna Barbee, lives in the house that would be destroyed.

A second option the state has developed would leave the farm intact.

Council member Alfred Brown Jr. suggested the council do something to support the local farmers' efforts to save their farms.

"I would like to encourage the state to consider alternate alignments for Pitts School Road to have minimal impact on the Barbee and Bonds family properties," Brown said. "I think the city council in my eight years has been a very pro-business group. We have an opportunity to help our citizens see a minimal impact to their businesses. We have an opportunity to take a stand to say this is an important thing. And yet we're not taking a stand against widening Interstate 85."

Brown said neither farming family asked him to make the resolution.

"It just seems like an opportunity for us to do something for an agribusiness that does a lot for the county," he said.

Brown's motion was quickly seconded and unanimously approved by the council.

The state plans to start acquiring right of way in April 2010, and to start construction in December 2011. The project is expected to take three years to complete.

The state Department of Transportation will continue to accept comments on the project through Thursday.

To submit a comment via e-mail, send it to Jamille Robbins at jarobbins@nc
dot.gov and type "TIP Project No. I-3803B comments" in the subject line. Comments also can be mailed to: Mr. Jamille A. Robbins, NCDOT - Human Environment Unit, 1598 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1598.