WILMINGTON — When the State of North Carolina required cities with populations over 90,000 to submit reports on their efforts regarding affordable housing, the City of Wilmington mentioned a potentially new zoning district — the Workforce-Housing Mixed-Use district.
But there was little information provided as to what exactly this district would consist of.
What was shared was the following, sentence, “WHMU, a new zoning option being considered in support of Workforce Housing in Mixed-Use developments, would waive all city development fees for developments that voluntarily include workforce housing.”
What wasn’t stated was that this new district would also allow more dense developments and taller construction height in exchange for affordable housing units.
More questions
The new district is still in its infancy but in an effort to bring more transparency to the district and conversations surrounding it, City of Wilmington spokeswoman Malissa Talbert addressed what is currently happening with it.
“The city is working on a new zoning option for qualified developments to facilitate more workforce/affordable housing. Staff is still putting it together but hopes to have something ready at least for Planning Commission before the end of the year. It would be written to address a clear public need with the main premise of more allowed height/density within areas where this type of development makes sense, according to guiding principles of the city’s Comprehensive Plan, in exchange for more units for workforce housing,” Talbert said.
There is some precedence in other cities that staff is using as a benchmark, but the State of North Carolina makes it difficult to outright offer (or impossible to require) incentives to promote affordable housing options.
“Staff is looking at other cities with similar policies, such as the City of Charleston. Of course, traditional types of incentives are not allowed per se in North Carolina (as opposed to South Carolina), so we are trying to come up with a voluntary option that would make economic sense to builders/developers while also generating a significant amount of revenue the city could use for workforce housing,” she said.
Waived fees
The City of Wilmington does not actually do building inspections and water/sewer permits, these are generally handled by the county and CFPUA. That being said, the city does have some relatively minor administrative fees for plans that could be waived for this district if affordable housing were included.
“As to development fees that could be waived, it’s difficult to ascertain as those specific revenue types are not broken down in either our budget or annual audit, but we do know it’s not a significant amount compared to our other revenue sources because the most costly items – building inspections and water/sewer permits (the most costly by far) – are not collected by the city. All we really have, as best I can tell right now, is plan review from both the Planning and Stormwater divisions, which would be well under $1 mil annually, probably under $500K,” she said.
The City recently requested proposals for the redevelopment of several city-owned properties located in the northern part of town — one proposal was received by East-West Partners.
The initial plans (which have not been approved yet) do include some affordable housing units — about 10 of the nearly 200 would be reserved for workforce housing. But it wasn’t this so-called Gateway Project that prompted the new zoning district, instead, it stemmed from another development off Military Cutoff Road, Arboretum West.
“The new zoning option being put together is not related to the Gateway Project, but is related to the Village Townhomes Project on Military Cutoff Road (formerly known as Arboretum West),” Talbert said.
The project, which is headed up by Tribute Properties, first was proposed developers had planned on including affordable housing units. However, it was later suggested that instead of providing affordable units, Tribute donate $500,000 to an ‘affordable housing trust fund.’
The idea had support, but creating the trust fund has proved to be more difficult than expected.
“When they offered up the $500K, that got the ball rolling on the need for a legal construct to consider those types of funds at the same time public concern was continuing to grow. Details on how many units would be involved (not required as it won’t be mandatory) haven’t yet been determined, but we’re probably looking at some standard number of units for a certain number of years in order to qualify for the additional density. This would be variable based on the size of the development,” Talbert said.
“The city realizes there is a great need here in Wilmington for more workforce housing so I expect this will move [through] the process pretty quickly once they get something put together. At the same time, we’re still in the process of rewriting our Land Development Code and other options/considerations to generate more workforce housing may be part of that,” she concluded.
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