The Heart of the Triad keeps growing…. and growing… and growing……
The Town of Oak Ridge has now joined the effort to prevent urban sprawl between Guilford and Forsyth counties. Though Oak Ridge isn’t within the HOT boundaries, Mayor Ray Combs is concerned that whatever goes on will affect the town and its residents:
“Our southern border is HOT’s northern border,” Combs said. “We were concerned about having no input into what was happening, which could certainly affect Oak Ridge. We felt like we should have been included from the get-go.”
I also find it interesting that HOT seems to have grown considerably in acreage over the past few weeks, as stories in the N&R (not posted) and the HPE refer to HOT as the “18,000 acre” region between Guillford and Forsyth counties. I realize that’s the size of the area the HOT steering committee initially was looking at, but they’ve made it clear their focus is a 6,300-acre region between Guilford and Forsyth.
I’m not saying there’s any subtle editorializing going on, but this is a HOT-button topic. Face it, preventing urban sprawl across 18,000 acres is considerably more difficult than preventing it over 6300 acres.
