As Downtown Apex Grows, Members of Historic Church Say They Need More Parking

Apex Baptist Church has stood on the corner of Salem and Chatham streets for the past 153 years. 

It was built the same year Apex was founded, in 1873, and has grown up with the town. A new sanctuary was built in 1912, and the church expanded again in 1951, 1961, 1987, and 2000. Today, it includes a preschool, works with local nonprofits, and provides a space for community meetings. And it’s still growing. 

Attendance at the church’s three Sunday morning services has doubled since 2018, according to Matthew Carpenter, a lawyer representing Apex Baptist. To deal with the increase, the church proposed building a parking garage behind their main building. There was only one problem. 

The proposal involved redeveloping a property that’s part of the historic downtown district—one of the factors that made Apex the 10th most desirable city to move to in 2025, according to the U.S. News and World Report. 

“We moved there for a reason,” said Michael Kanters, who lives down the street from the site of the proposed parking deck. “Because of the downtown character, because of the historic district.”

Some residents have lived nearby on Jones or West Chatham street for decades, watching the area grow, they said at the public hearing Tuesday night. Andrea Pomarico, a mother of two, spoke in opposition to the proposed parking garage, concerned it would cause increased traffic and make her neighborhood unsafe. 

“I don’t mind that we don’t go for a walk around the block on Sundays because of the traffic. I’m okay not going to the park,” she said. “What I’m not okay giving up is my sidewalk, that the town has built on Jones to create a safe place for pedestrians and for my children to play … That is where we go with our scooters, and our bikes, and we’re out there with chalk.”

Apex Town Council members universally rejected the proposal. Most agreed that building the parking garage would essentially destroy the historic nature of the property, which is currently home to two houses dating from the 1950s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The site is also protected by zoning regulations in the town’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). Apex’s Small Town Character Overlay District puts in place strict rules about construction in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown—even down to the color people can paint their houses. 

“We have made a priority, as a town, to look at historic preservation and maintaining that small town character within this specific geographic area,” said council member Ed Gray. “We put that special burden on the folks who live within this area because we want to maintain a certain feel, look, tone, and demeanor.” 

In addition to the parking garage’s impact on the area’s character, neighbors raised concerns about the increase in traffic they expected the parking garage to attract, arguing it would make their small residential street unsafe. 

Church representatives argued they had an urgent need for additional parking, and that the proposal would benefit the community, since it would be open to the public in addition to church members. They also argued that they’d made significant compromises to accommodate neighbor and staff concerns, including plans to relocate one of the two historic homes, hire a parking attendant, and revise the garage design to blend in more cohesively with the historic district.

In the end, the decision appeared to come down to whether the project was worth making an exception to the town’s preservation rules. 

“There’s been a lot of discussion tonight … about the need for the parking. To me, that’s not really the issue. The issue is can you build parking in this location? Does our UDO allow it? It plainly doesn’t,” said Mayor Pro Tem Terry Mahaffey. 

“If this [the small town character overlay district] is something we value as a town, [and] I think we do … I don’t think we can approve this project,” Mahaffey continued.

This particular rezoning case ties into a much larger conversation around Apex’s struggle to accommodate growth, including the need for more parking. In 2019, the town adopted a new downtown master plan that included proposals to increase parking availability. 

Staff even considered the feasibility of building a parking deck downtown with as many as 480 spaces, but instead expanded the Saunders Street lot from 240 to 392 spaces, a project that was completed in January. 

“Part of what we built—an additional 152 spaces … was in response to some of our neighbors downtown,” said council member Shane Reese at the meeting Tuesday. “It was the businesses, it was the church, and it was in the spirit of collaboration.”

Also on the horizon were plans to add public parking along Commerce and Seaboard streets, which currently function as alleys on either side of Salem Street—the main downtown throughway which is currently undergoing streetscape improvements to encourage visitors to walk and gather downtown. Conflicts with private property owners, however, forced the council to downsize the Seaboard Street plan and cancel the Commerce Street plan.  

“The property owners didn’t want to sell, at least not at the price the town was willing to pay,” Mahaffey wrote about the Seaboard project, in a recap of the Apex Town Council retreat in early February. “We choose to scale back in a unanimous vote.”

The scaled-back plan for Seaboard Street will still add additional parking around the alleyway, but will not include the driveway-like loop opposite the railroad that was originally proposed. Construction is expected to start 2028, subject to approval of the project budget.

The Commerce Street project, as well, posed challenges. In addition to conflicts between the town council and property owners over the technical details of development, many were simply unwilling to sell the property in question, saying they wanted to maintain their private parking or may want to expand their buildings in the future. The town council voted to cancel the project as proposed and defer any other improvements.

“I am sincerely disappointed,” Mahaffey wrote. “The Town was willing to spend millions to improve this area to the great benefit of all the surrounding property, but without the partnership of the property owners, the likely costs and time involved had grown exponentially to the point where it wasn’t viable.”

As more people flock to Apex, the town council is sure to face equally challenging cases in the future. Council members emphasized the importance of compromise at Tuesday night’s meeting, saying they appreciated the concessions the church had made during the rezoning process. 

But given the result, it’s hard not to think that these two forces—the inevitable growth of the community and the desire of residents to preserve the charm of their small town—will continue to be in tension.

“As we look out to the future, we are gonna need more parking. That is clear,” said Mayor Jacques Gilbert. “I would like to see us look at building for the future.”

Comment on this story at [email protected].