WILMINGTON — The Wilmington Planning Commission reviewed its prior recommendation of a land code amendment allowing for more duplexes in one housing district, approving new changes suggested by staff despite “‘angst” over placing an undue burden on property owners.
If signed off on by Wilmington City Council in January, the amendment would affect nearly 850 properties concentrated downtown, allowing the property owners to construct a duplex where the current code prohibits them.
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The goal, according to Planning Director Linda Painter, is to “reduce a significant barrier to missing middle housing,” referring to housing types between in scale to mid-rise apartments and detached single-family homes.
This medium-density grouping includes townhomes, courtyard buildings and more; the amendment on the city’s table would only apply to duplexes in the R-3 residential district. While the R-3 district’s use is not limited to greater downtown, it is not used outside of that area currently.
Currently, the land code prohibits duplexes on R-3 lots less than 4,000 square feet. However, homeowners can build an accessory dwelling unit on the same lot.
Such was the reasoning behind an application to amend the land code from JC Lyle, before she was elected to city council on Dec. 2; the planning commission approved it in October. Ahead of it going before council, however, staff and the applicant had further discussions regarding potential “unintended consequences” that could result from the amendment.
Painter said the concern was over the scale at which the original amendment, with no cap on the size of the duplex, would have allowed. The original amendment would have allowed for a homeowner to essentially double its square footage whereas an ADU is limited in size. The code caps ADUs at 50% of the gross floor area of the principal building or 1,200 square feet, whichever is smaller.
Thus, city planning staff decided to treat the duplex as an incentive, requiring homeowners wanting to build a duplex to meet certain requirements. These includes:
- Facade orientation must be consistent with the block face
- At least one entrance must face the primary street
- A front porch at least 8 feet deep and 50% of the front facade wide
- For homes within the National Historic Register District (between 50% and 70% of R-3 zoned properties): windows equivalent to 25% of the front facade
The planning commission questioned the intent of the criteria.
“They’re really designed and focused on the experience that someone would have walking down the street, focused on really trying to protect neighborhood characters, so that we’re not introducing something that has a much larger scale that then does not fit into the neighborhood character,” Painter said.
She noted staff is constrained on what it can write into the land code, as many design features are off limits to regulation unless in the historic districts.
Painter also shared staff’s resistance to putting height limits in the updated amendment, noting an R-3 single-family home has the ability to be constructed with two stories and go up to 35 feet. Thus, a developer building a duplex should have the right to add a second story even if surrounded by single-story homes, under the city’s logic.
“Cities evolve, buildings of all blocks evolve, and they can get larger,” Painter said.
Still, the planning commissioners expressed reservations about the amendment’s changes.
“I want to see more development in that [downtown] area, there’s just a lot of things that are one street over that don’t match what we’re regulating,” Commissioner Livian Jones said.
One particular hang-up was the porch requirement, with several commissioners questioning if that regulation was veering too far.
“I’m struggling, I had absolutely no qualms in October — I have a really big qualm about item C,” Commissioner John Lennon said, referring to the porch requirement.
He added his daughter lives in a duplex in Charleston, with two long porches that run down the side. He questioned why that kind of design wouldn’t meet the city’s standard.
Painter explained most of the homes within the R-3 zonings have front porches, and thus, they are part of the character of the neighborhood. She also clarified it would only apply to newly constructed homes, sharing around 72 of the 846 lots zoned under R-3 are vacant (to the best of her staff’s knowledge). If developers wanted to convert an existing structure to a duplex, they would not be required to build a porch.
Speaking to other designs, like the one Lennon brought up, Painter noted property owners could appeal to the Design Adjustment Committee. Staff decided to send the duplex incentive there instead of to the Wilmington Board of Adjustment because the committee has less strict standards to abide by, thus reducing the hardship on property owners wanting to construct a duplex.
“Somebody may come in with a different design that says, ‘I’m addressing the orientation standards you’re trying to create, I’m just doing it in a different way. I don’t want to do that through a front porch, I want to do that through a stoop,’” Painter said.
At least one of the planning commissioners didn’t mind the porch requirement.
“I think we talk about new neighborhoods and the neighborhood feel and the character — the first thing we’re going to talk about is having a front porch so you can sit and have coffee and talk to your neighbors,” Commissioner Richard Collier said. “It will be the first sentence that the land planners put up when they start talking about it.”
There was consensus among the commission to strike the porch requirement from the recommendation, though it ultimately didn’t make it to the final motion.
“I liked it written better in October without any of this stuff, but I understand the reasoning behind it, and I thank you for keeping the character of the downtown area,” Collier said.
The amendment will go before the Wilmington City Council on January 6, 2026.
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