Residents at Raleigh’s Homestead Village Mobile Home Park are ecstatic over news that WJ Properties is dropping its request for a rezoning of the park’s 38 acres.

Cary Joshi of WJ Properties told IndyWeek that the firm would instead look elsewhere. The zoning request, to be heard Tuesday, remains active in a formal sense.

Claudia Shows, a resident at Homestead Village for more than 30 years, rejoiced.

“As long as it is still a mobile home park,” she said, “we don’t care. We have still got to be cautious, I suppose. But, I am so excited, I just want to burst! This is the best news.”

The park’s owners still want to sell. This news, though, means that they will not be selling to WJ. WJ had sought a rezoning to build a shopping center, several housing developments, and some open land on the tract. It would have introduced many new homes to the area. Estimates by The City of Raleigh predicted that more than 500 children would be assigned to the area’s elementary schools as a result.

Shows organized some of the residents. She was able to generate support from her college classmates, as well as to generate some good media. That said, the rezoning decision may be a product of larger forces in the financial markets. Joshi tells Bob Geary that the decision to drop reflects a lack of available financing for shopping center developments.

H1700, the bill that provides a tax deduction (of 5 percent of sales price) to park owners that sell to non-profits, passed in the budget bill before the end of the short session in the 2008 NCGA.

It will be interesting to see what Clyde Holt, III does when the Raleigh Planning Commission hears rezoning petition z-006-08 on July 1st. Clyde Holt, an attorney with the Smith Moore Law Firm in Raleigh, sits on this board.

The rezoning is sought by Katherine and Robert Binns, owners of the Homestead Village Mobile Home Park. They would like to get the rezoning, as a potential buyer requires such a change in order to redevelop the property which is currently zoning for manufactured housing parks.

The potential buyers are represented by David York, an attorney in the same firm as Holt — Smith Moore.

Thus far, Holt has left the room during discussions related to the case. That’s an honest decision. Its a responsible action.

Rezoning petition z-06-008 will determine if more than 160 homeowners are evicted from their mobile homes in order to make way for a new residential development.

A valid protest petition was filed at the rezoning case’s public hearing by residents of a nearby housing development. In that petition, the residents indicated that they were concerned about the impacts of a potential new road that they feared might be a part of the new development.

As a result of that petition, the rezoning case will need approval from three quarter’s of the planning commission. The commission consists of eight members plus the Mayor, Charles Meeker. That would mean at least six members must vote to approve the change.

With Holt sitting out, it will require the “no vote” of only two commission members to scuttle the rezoning.