WILMINGTON — A plan to double the units on a single-family property off Wrightsville Avenue passed unanimously by the Wilmington Planning Commission this week, even though staff worried the project’s setbacks and frontage were incongruent with the surrounding area.
Greenwood Cottages LLC, managed by Carol Ivey, applied for a conditional rezoning of 5324 Wrightsville Avenue from R-15 to R-5 to allow for higher density residential development. The request will go before Wilmington City Council for final approval.
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Though a small development, the plan highlighted the tension between preserving neighborhood character and allowing property owners with unconventional lots to further develop the property and potentially add to the city’s housing stock.
The proposed plan is to construct a two-story house and two-story accessory dwelling unit on the site where a single-family home and attached ADU already exist. The lot would be subdivided and the new structures would be built in between the current house and Wrightsville Avenue. A courtyard parking structure, accommodating four cars, for both lots is also to be provided, per the site plan.
The majority of staff’s recommendations were either strong or modest non-support.
“We want to maintain the residential character of what’s currently located along the Wrightsville Avenue corridor,” Senior Development Review Planner Zachary Dickerson said.
Staff were concerned about the new home fronting much closer to Wrightsville Avenue than the homes around it, as well as the orientation of the building also facing Wrightsville Avenue instead of Park Avenue. If the rezoning were granted, the property owner would be allowed to reduce its front setback from 20 feet to 10 feet.
“There’s a long history along Wrightsville Avenue of protecting the single-family character going back to 1990,” Assistant Planning Director Brian Chambers said.
Cindee Wolf, representing the property owner and applicant, said she didn’t think the property owner should not be able to optimize the property just because of the original placement of the existing house.
“I feel like we’ve become so tethered to conditional districts sometimes that sometimes logical and sensible decisions get bogged down with some bureaucracy, if you will,” Wolf said. “In this day and age, with the deficit in housing, certainly the issues with affordability of housing that we do have available, you think this rezoning, this entire strip of through lots along Wrightsville Avenue would have made sense.”
According to Wolf, the development team hasn’t been made aware of any opposition to the project and no one showed up to the community meeting, as required for rezonings. She said the applicant was trying to fit within the character of the neighborhood, noting that while the R-5 setback could be 10 feet at minimum with a rezoning, they were proposing a 33-foot setback between the new home and Wrightsville Avenue.
Ultimately, the planning commissioners agreed the benefits of the project outweighed the drawbacks.
“Gentle density is something that has been talked about, and I think this illustrates a good way to do that,” Commissioner Danny Adams said.
Commissioner Ace Cofer agreed.
“[Wrightsville Avenue] is a huge eclectic mix of housing products; it’s got one of the largest mobile home properties in Wilmington still in existence,” Cofer said. “When we talk about affordable housing, that’s really hitting a lot of notes and the subtle increase in density just just makes a lot of sense.”
[Ed. Note: A previous version of this article included the wrong site plan as an image; it has been corrected with the right image and PCD regrets the error.]
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