WILMINGTON — A New Hanover County commissioner is advocating the purchase of a long-vacant property to preserve the region’s greenspace and potentially create an ‘Airlie Gardens 2.0.’ At the same time, a Charlotte-based developer seeks to use the site for a major new rental complex in Wilmington.
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Next month, City of Wilmington Planning Commission will consider a rezoning petition for a 60.9-acre property at 3990 Independence Boulevard, located between the new Harris Teeter on Carolina Beach Road and Echo Farms. The parcel is zoned 65% for industrial uses and 35% MD-17, which allows high density, multiple-dwelling development.
Applicant Cindee Wolf of Design Solutions is seeking to rezone the entire site to MD-17 to create a 580-unit multi-dwelling complex developed by Charlotte-based Northwood Ravin.
New Hanover County co-owns the site with the heirs of the former property owner, Flossie Bryan. The county appointed Jerry Mannen — administrator of the Bryan estate — to oversee the sale of the property. Wolf is acting as Mannen’s agent for the rezoning petition.
The project would include 512 apartments, 45 townhomes, and 25 single-family units. It would require 1,022 parking spaces and is expected to generate 3,917 trips per day; a traffic impact analysis is currently underway.
Preliminary site plans found the development would disturb approximately 46 acres of the 61-acre tract. At least 60% of the area would remain without surface coverage; the project envisions conservation areas to address wetlands and special flood zones within the site. Site drainage flows into Barnard’s Creek watershed.
Wolf argued in the application the development would provide new homes to address the county’s housing shortage, increase the tax base, and upgrade the land without negative impacts.
“Current population trends are indicating the arrival of more retirees and younger urbanites who appear to prefer different housing options than the historic single-family model,” she wrote. “Rental complexes, such as the one proposed, offer luxury amenities, multiple recreation opportunities, and a low-maintenance lifestyle.”
The applicant held a community meeting with 29 residents last month about the proposal. They raised concerns regarding increased traffic along Independence Boulevard, stormwater management, and relocation of wildlife.
“General consensus was ‘no more development’ but no specific or valid justifications for hindering it were offered,” Wolf wrote in a post-meeting report to City Clerk Penny Spicer-Sidbury.
Alternatively, at Monday’s commissioner meeting, Dane Scalise argued in favor of conserving the site for a park or greenspace. The commissioner asked for clarification about the county’s stake and history with the property after reading a Wilmington Business Journal article about the rezoning petition and receiving messages from three concerned citizens.
County Manager Chris Coudriet told commissioners Monday he believed pursuing conservation of the property would require a modification to a previous court order but would defer the question to an attorney. He detailed a history of legal disputes over the last two decades and noted options are limited by a 2006 settlement with the former property owner’s heirs.
Commissioner Rob Zapple estimated the county’s former attorney spent potentially 1,000 hours on the complex estate dispute. Flossie Bryan executed a will in 2000 that left the land to the county to develop a park or community garden before she passed away in June 2003. But in May 2002, she appeared at the courthouse to reclaim the will. It was destroyed a week later.
A month earlier in April 2002, a medical professional determined she’d developed dementia and was unable to administrate her estate. A 2006 jury trial overseen by Superior Court judge Charles Henry concurred and found Bryan did not have capacity to revoke her will.
Seven of Bryan’s heirs appealed the ruling and reached a settlement with the county in December 2006. The agreement ordered the county to use its best efforts to rezone the property to its “highest and best use” before selling it. Two-thirds of the proceeds would go to the county and one third would be distributed to the seven heirs.
Zapple said it is unclear which third of the property the heirs would claim, a potentially significant factor due to wetlands within the site.
Coudriet said the heirs would be entitled to a third of the overall value of the property; its appraised 2024 value is $9,233,500, according to property records.
The settlement released both parties from any future legal action against each other. It also allows either party to put the property up for auction and sell it at a minimum of $8 million.
“I’d be willing to entertain that,” Scalise mentioned of an upset bid process. “I want to put my words into action. I don’t want to just talk about green space because it’s the political season. I want to make green space a reality. I don’t think that the people are going to tolerate us allowing things to continue on the way that they’ve been.”
The commissioner told Port City Daily the county could seek conservation funding from the New Hanover County Endowment, the state, or the federal government to purchase the portion of the property the county doesn’t own.
“I’m open to whomever wants to partner with us,” Scalise said. “Even if no one wants to partner with us, I still think the county has an opportunity to make Airlie Gardens 2.0.”
Former assistant county attorney Sharon Huffman told StarNews in 2011, the sale stalled after the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis triggered a recession. She noted the county could move forward with plans for a park if approved by the estate’s heirs.
One of the property’s seven inheritors, William English, urged the county to move forward on the settlement agreement at a September 2015 commissioner meeting. Bryan revoked English’s authority over her estate in January 2002, according to county property records.
Coudriet noted a modification of the settlement was made in 2022; PCD reached out to the county for the document but it was not received by press.
“How frequently are we going to come across 60 acres that the county already owns?” Scalise asked. “It’s going to be a difficult proposition to just outright buy that much land from anybody, but we already own two-thirds of it. I’d love to try to make a deal work.”
Scalise argued the county should consider adaptive reuse — for example, converting vacant commercial real estate into residential units — to create affordable housing rather than build new complexes in environmentally sensitive areas.
“We don’t have to expand into tree space that we’re going to have to cut down,” he said. “We’ve got buildings that can be built up or improved upon. We can move people into them.”
Charlotte-based Northwood Ravin Development is the developer of the proposed 580-unit complex.
“Theoretically that developer will own the property if it is successful in securing the rezoning,” Coudriet said at the Monday commissioner meeting. “If not then we are back to where we have been.”
John Kukral — CEO of Northwood Investors and co-founder of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors — formed the firm as a partnership with Ravin Partners CEO David Ravin in 2011. The average rent of Northwood Ravin units is $2,438, according to 2024 ALN Apartment Data.
Northwood Ravin uses RealPage property management software cited in an antitrust lawsuit filed by Attorney General Josh Stein, the U.S. Department of Justice, and six other states in August. The suit argues RealPage helps companies collude to increase rents by sharing confidential information, including vacancy rates and lease expiration dates to suggest rent prices that maximize profits.
Port City Daily reached out to the developer to ask about its use of RealPage but did not receive a response by press.
“Our tool ensures that [landlords] are driving every possible opportunity to increase price even in the most downward trending or unexpected conditions,” RealPage stated in the suit.
Three of the top 10 markets cited in the lawsuit are in North Carolina: Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham-Chapel Hill. The majority of Northwood Ravin’s units are in the three markets.
According to the suit, RealPage said it helps “curb [landlord’s] instincts” to lower rents during periods of lower occupancy and leasing velocity, the rate at which rental units are leased.
“Who here has not experienced a blunder of overcorrecting a leasing velocity challenge with price and ended up leaving money on the table,” Northwood Ravin senior vice president of asset management Courtney Duffy Schnee told RealPage senior vice president of revenue management Amy Dreyfuss in a 2022 interview.
[Correction: This article has been updated to note county manager Chris Coudriet told commissioners he believed purchasing the property for conservation would require a modification to the court-ordered settlement agreement. PCD regrets this error.]
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