PENDER COUNTY — The Pender County Board of Commissioners voted Monday night last week to deny a developer’s request to rezone 347-acres of land from rural agriculture zoning to residential mixed conditional zoning district for the development of 405 single family townhome units and 157 single family units.
The vote came after the county’s Planning Board voted unanimously to approve the rezoning in September. The Board of Commissioners was scheduled to discuss the topic in October, but the item was tabled until last night.
The developer, Hardison Building Company is a Wilmington based company with houses throughout Southeast North Carolina.
“The proposed development consists of 157 single family residential lots and 405 townhome units, for a total of 562 single family residential units on ±326.15 acres. Access to the subject parcel is provided directly from NC HWY 210 through property under the same ownership submitted as part of the Conditional Rezoning application,” according to documents submitted to the Board of Commissioners.
Planning Director for Pender County Kyle Breuer presented the request to the Board of Commissioners, and members of the public also weighed in on the issue during the public comment section.
The Board of Commissioners eventually denied the request, saying the increased population density would be detrimental to the county at this time – even though if the developer chose to develop the land without the rezoning they could still put 530 new units on the property.
“The density for this project is 562 units and I believe the density for a matter of right subdivision is 530 units. I am told it is 9.4 percent difference, that would indicate in either case over 1,000 residents when its built out,” A representative of Hardison Building Company said during the public comment portion of the meeting.
It is not yet known what Hardison Building Company plans to do with the property now that the rezoning was denied. Port City Daily reached out to Hardison Building Company for comment but at the time of publication the company had not responded to requests for comment.
Michael Praats can be reached at Michael.p@localvoicemedia.com
