WILMINGTON — Take a drive down Military Cutoff Road in Wilmington and you would be hard pressed to find a parcel of land that has not been rezoned to accommodate requests for new developments. What used to be residential has piece by piece become commercial and mixed-use properties. Just like dominoes, it seems once one piece of land is rezoned another will shortly follow suit and request a rezoning.
While developments like The Avenue and CenterPoint are massive projects there are smaller pieces of land that are now surrounded by commercial developments — like the roughly 2-acre property on Military Cutoff Road and Old MacCumber Station Road requesting a rezoning from residential to office and industrial.
The properties in question located at 575 Military Cutoff Road and 519 Old MacCumber station road are zoned O&I-1 (office and institutional) and R-15 (medium-density residential) respectively, but thanks to the changing face of adjacent properties the owner of the land believes these zoning districts are now obsolete.
Now, the owner of the properties is asking for a rezoning to allow for the construction of a 2-story office building.
According to a rezoning request made by Jennifer Williams of Cape Fear Engineering, rezoning the property would help fulfill the city’s hopes for infill development and provide cross-access with the planned Avenue development.
“The close proximity of the subject project to the recently approved rezoning of The Avenue project present a unique opportunity to integrate the two projects and provide much desired vehicular connection from The Avenue project to Old MacCumber Station Road,” according to the application.
” … 519 Old MacCumber Station Road is currently an isolated R-15 lot surrounded by other properties that have been recently rezoned and have been or will soon be developed with uses not compatible with the existing R-15 zoning,” the application concluded.
The City of Wilmington’s Planning Commission will hear from the applicant at its December board meeting and decide on approval or denial of the application.
Michael Praats can be reached at Michael.P@Localvoicemedia.com
