The old saying “Build it and they will come” may not quite apply to many residents of the greater Preston-south Morrisville area when it comes to the Crosland shopping mall at Davis and High House Road in Cary, and the Park West Village extravaganza at Cary Parkway and Chapel Hill Road in Morrisville. Both were approved by respective town officials despite overwhelming opposition from residents who neither needed nor wanted more shopping centers in their immediate vicinity.

The majority of area residents in both towns wanted to preserve their neighborhood suburban quality of life. Many made significant personal investments in their homes and wanted to preserve property values and avoid high traffic as well as urbanization, over-commercialization and increased air pollution. If conversations with a sample of people in both towns are any indication, a good number do not plan to patronize either mall. People remain resentful that their neighborhoods are being treated as just another market, and are resentful toward their so-called representatives who ignored their concerns and favored profit-seeking developers. Some believe these malls will flop.

When officials align themselves with developers and consider their own residents, their most important taxpaying and voting interest group, as less important, then their towns begin to decline.

Hundreds if not thousands in the area opposed Cary’s permitting another “mini-Crossroads” at Davis and High House. They retaliated by removing their pro-commercial mayor. Two other council members who approved the Crosland project also will be targeted in the next election. In Morrisville, the board majority, led by their commercial-agenda mayor Faulkner, with the full backing of commissioners Johnson, Stohlman, Snyder and Murry, who voted to change the zone permitting the development, enthusiastically approved Park West. Only commissioners Lyons and Martin opposed.

Before the Morrisville vote, the board majority arrogantly ignored some 850 petitions from residents of Morrisville and adjoining Cary who adamantly opposed Park West’s huge mixed-use shopping center at Cary Parkway and Chapel Hill Road. The project’s 95 prime acres should have been earmarked for quality homesites comparable with nearby Preston.

Housing will recover and upper-end homes are less affected by the economic downturn. Town balance also calls for more quarter- and third-acre homesites but the commercials in charge want high density for more mall shoppers.

In Cary, traffic at Davis and High House is already hectic if not down right dangerous. Having traffic-generating shopping at all four corners will make conditions far worse. In Morrisville, Park West is expected to add another 20,000 weekday car movements at the town’s worst traffic-accident intersection. How’s that for “planning?” This project will give new meaning to the word congestion for its customers, Park West apartment dwellers and already traffic-choked commuters on Chapel Hill Road and Cary Parkway.

No wonder many area residents do not consider either shopping center convenient. Neither of these malls, nor the Super Wal-Mart Morrisville mayor Faulkner and the pro-commercial board majority approved (except commissioners Lyons, Martin and Holcombe) are located on the interstate. That Wal-Mart on huge acreage at the north end of the town’s stretch of Chapel Hill Road will add many thousand more car movements daily.

Morrisville in particular needs all the acreage possible for homes, especially low-density homes. Too many malls in town represent lost opportunities and hopes for building town character, reducing traffic and increasing revenues. Residential, especially low density, is far more tax valuable than commercial, which in Morrisville has long been subsidized on the backs of residents.

The people of both towns need new officials who care more about their residents’ quality of life than pandering to the interests of so-called smart-growth developers and chamber of commerce crowds that have been creating a mess out of these towns for their own benefit. These towns need to change direction as soon as possible. In Morrisville, pro-commerical representatives must be replaced in November 2009. The majority of incumbents let developers decide how the town develops and that’s not good enough.