After 15 years–a pendulum period with a rich boom in local development before the brakes of the Great Recession–the man who ran Brunswick County’s planning department is moving on.
To a bigger game, that is. After his final day in the office Aug. 30, Planning Director Leslie Bell will report to Guilford County, whose government is bringing him on as its new director of planning and development.
While Guilford (Greensboro its dominant city) is nearly five times as populous as Brunswick, that southeast North Carolina county has hardly been a sleepy one for a planner.
“Very dynamic, and challenging,” Bell, 44, said Thursday when asked to summarize his work with Brunswick County. “Yet, rewarding at the same time.”
National attention had fallen to Brunswick County mid last decade as the U.S. Census Bureau, for years straight, identified it as one of the top-20 fastest growing counties in the U.S. Between 2000 and 2010, its population mushroomed nearly 47 percent, much of it occurring within just a few years as developers were hurling scores of new communities into this new hotspot for retirees and second homes by the coast.
(Brunswick County is still in the top-100 for growth, out of the nation’s 3,141 counties or county-equivalents, like parishes.)
Bell began work with Brunswick County government just prior to the home-building peak, aboard July 1998 as its zoning administrator and as the planning department’s director by the following year.
“We just hate to see him go. He’s just been with us so long and been very instrumental in the development of the [Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO, the primary planning guide for the county] and other advancements in our planning department,” Brunswick County Board of Commissioners Chairman Phil Norris, a board member since 2002, said Wednesday.
The UDO developed out of a plan called Brunswick Tomorrow, a sort of framework for quality growth built with help from the public at forums in 2003. Primary focuses were consensus-based growth, economic development, infrastructure to serve it all and a cherished environment.
“You always have the challenge of ensuring that when an area does change, that the change is more positive than negative, and you certainly hope that everybody can benefit from it,” Bell said.
With the UDO a long-labored-over, community-influenced document to that end, “I think we handled and managed that growth in a way that we certainly hope would encourage good stewardship as the county continues to develop and prosper,” he said.
While growth had to be a central focus, related factors like affordable housing brought their own challenges. Home values were soaring with demand, but the geographically large county–one of the state’s largest at 855 square miles–still had to have adequate living for teachers, police officers, service industry workers and persons in the early stages of their careers.
Bell “took the county through a visioning exercise that put affordable housing on the map and made it one of the things that the county commissioners should take a look at. That became a goal of the county commissioners,” recalled Resea Willis, head of the nonprofit Brunswick Housing Opportunities.
Willis said Bell arranged demographic information that made possible the state’s first workforce housing study for a county. Released in 2007, it determined Brunswick County was well understocked for the workforce, and that counteractive planning was needed there and in other counties like it.
“We were the first county in the state to have a workforce housing study,” said Willis. “Leslie was instrumental in that.”
When the Great Recession threw molasses on general development’s pace, in the mid-to-latter part of the decade, Bell said he made sure to treat it positively. He said he put the department’s focus on distressed developments and working with their developers; he also regarded it as a time to reflect on prior years of planning and regulation that perhaps needed a fresh look.
“It certainly changed the day to day activity here,” Bell said.
When he arrives in Guilford County, in early September, he’ll oversee 30-35 staffers in planning, development and building inspections as well as solid waste and recycling.
According to the Census Bureau, nearly 600,000 residents live in Guilford County, whose manager will be a familiar face to Bell. It’s Marty Lawing, the former Brunswick County manager who only left in May for his current post.
Past story: Brunswick manager Lawing accepts Guilford job
A call to Lawing wasn’t immediately returned.
Reached Wednesday, current Brunswick County Manager Ann Hardy said Bell won’t be easy to replace.
“I think Leslie is one of those rare people that you meet and you realize that you are with an individual that you have so much respect for,” Hardy said, “because he exemplifies professionalism and integrity, and he’s just a very good, kindhearted person.
“This is going to be a very big loss for the county.”
Ben Brown is a news reporter at Port City Daily. Reach him at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter: @benbrownmedia
