WILMINGTON—In two years, more than half of the city’s vacant land has disappeared. What remains is likely to become residential property, according to some local realtors.
As of last week, there are approximately only 2,800 acres of vacant, buildable land left — that’s about 9 percent of the city’s total acreage. Nationally, an average of 16.7 percent of land is considered vacant in large cities, according to a study in the Journal of Urban Design. That study found that what land does remain is usually smaller and disconnected parcels ill-suited for large projects.
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Development continues
As the city takes steps to incentivize redevelopment at sites where structures are already present, vacant undeveloped land is up for grabs.
According to the city’s Create Wilmington Comprehensive Plan, there were approximately 6,757 acres of vacant land in 2016. Concentrated areas of vacant land could be found along the riverfront near RiverLights, near The Pointe at Barclay, off Military Cutoff Road and near North Kerr Avenue and Market Street.
Many of the large tracts that were still undeveloped two years ago are now under contract, including the recently approved Avenue project, a 44-acre tract on Military Cutoff Road, and GLOW Academy’s 30-acre expansion now under construction near Market Street and North Kerr Avenue.
“It’s kind of crazy,” Grayson Powell, owner of Coldwell Banker Commercial, said.
Buyers look for land to develop without the cost of demolition, Powell said, but the vacant land that’s left is in high demand, which also drives up cost.
“It’s kind of like everybody wants to be on the island, so to speak, so as long as there’s demand that’s going to raise prices,” Powell said. “People are going to take what they can get to be on the island.”
Powell believes the current scarcity of land in the city was created in part by outside developers taking advantage of acreage available at a discount after the financial crisis of 2008.
“For me, my thinking is that it really began back in the downturn where a number of I guess outside companies — companies from outside our area, not local folks — I guess took advantage of the opportunity to enter into this market at a very competitive price,” he said.
“It’s because of the scarcity of opportunity and it’s going to continue.”
Vacant land means more residences, more traffic
Mark Bodford, a commercial and residential agent with Intracoastal Realty, has a total of nearly 100 acres of land listed for sale or pending in the Masonboro area. “Buying vacant property has a lot of advantages,” Bodford said.
Bodford said a lot of the remaining vacant land is expected to become residential, for example the four vacant properties Bodford has listed near Masonboro Road could be developed into single-family homes. Bodford said new residences will mean more traffic.
“You can think in one home there’s going to be at least two cars and two people,” he said. “Our population here is growing like crazy, traffic is horrible, and all these developments that I have here are going to be new homes.”
As more homes — and more traffic — are added to the area, Bodford said infrastructure improvements are needed to keep up with the growing trend. But developers of small tracts of land aren’t likely to be part of road upgrades the way developers of large mixed-use developments like The Avenue or CenterPoint are.
“It’s got to be maintained but not at my level,” Bodford said. “It’s got to be done at the city level.”
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