WILMINGTON — Last month, the New Hanover County Planning Board voted unanimously to suggest denial of a rezoning that would pave the way for more workforce housing in the region. Monday evening, county commissioners disagreed with the recommendation.
READ MORE: Workforce housing development declined by planning board
Pastor Rob Campbell — behind New Beginnings Church and the nonprofit New Helping Ordinary People Excel Community Development Corporation — plans to bring 128 units to a 10.94-acre parcel of land at the 3100 block of Blue Clay Road. He told Port City Daily last month he would not be amending the project further or withdrawing it. Instead, he said leaders needed to have the political will to start making changes they want to see; with such little land left in the county, more vertical building would have to be considered.
The Covenant Family Community project was originally pitched as 180 three-story units but decreased by 52 following planning board comments at the beginning of the year. The planning board still denied the rezoning for the 128-unit project in February due to density, but on Monday commissioners voted 4-1, with LeAnn Pierce dissenting, to push it through.
Covenant Family Community will consist of both two-story and three-story buildings, the latter not facing surrounding developments. Rent will be affordable to essential workers — police officers, teachers — who make roughly $40,000 a year and struggle to find affordable housing in New Hanover County.
County staff recommended approval from R-5 (residential moderate) to RMF-M (multi-family), noting it achieves the county’s “strategic objective of providing a variety of housing options.” They did require multiple conditions are met, primarily the guarantee that 100% of the units are workforce housing, made available for a period of no less than 15 years.
The commissioners meeting was crowded with people both in favor and opposed to the project. Most who spoke against it took umbrage with density — surrounding residential areas are mostly zoned R-10, a density of 3.3 units per acre. The Covenant Family Community will be 11 units per acre.
Many attendees cited traffic issues, disproportionate aesthetics of single-family versus multiple-family homes, poor drainage and overcrowded schools as reasons to deny the development.
“Traffic is atrocious, there are no shoulders on Blue Clay Road,” Christina Stevens told commissioners during the public hearing. “When these EMS are trying to, you know, get to where they’re going, that’s a problem.”
Traffic was determined to bring in 64 a.m. and 59 p.m. peak hour trips. A traffic impact study was not needed; it’s only required when numbers exceed 100 peak-hour trips a day.
Ronald Sparks, who lives nearby, spoke in opposition.
“It’s a beehive of people going to be dropped in my neighborhood,” he said, adding he owns 100 affordable homes in Brunswick County and has apartments going up in Hampstead.
“I’m not unsympathetic to the need,” Sparks said, “but as usual, it affects me too. It’s in my backyard.”
Sparks’ main concerns were vehicles clogging roadways and improper drainage.
Scott Gallagher of nearby Rachel’s Place agreed.
“This was denied for many, many, many reasons,” he said. “Lots of research and 57 letters of opposition from my neighborhood alone. I don’t understand why I’m here again.”
Linda Shaw, also from Rachel’s Place, spoke out at the planning board meeting and again Monday. She pointed to water already gathering on nearby Old Mill Road during a heavy rainstorm; it runs between Blue Clay and Castle Hayne roads and is a connector to the proposed development.
“You have to stop and wait for the drainage before continuing to drive through,” she said, also adding left-hand turns on Blue Clay were dangerous enough without more cars added to the area.
Campbell countered environmental concerns, saying the plan’s open space is 33%, despite only being required 20%.
County staff clarified to commissioners the project had an existing stormwater infiltration basin, a 30-foot drainage easement along the northern boundary and a pond expansion on the western side of the project, in addition to an existing pond on the southern portion.
“A staff engineer spoke at the planning board last month and was clear water doesn’t run north or south to the Rachel’s Place property or on the other side,” Campbell clarified. “It runs west.”
Lack of a public transportation stop in the area was addressed too; it is often centered as a necessity for affordable housing developments to help people who may not have a car get to and from work and to run daily errands. However, county staff were clear in the presentation to commissioners that Wave Transit has launched micro transit, a ride-share program like Uber or Lyft that runs for $2 a ride, dropping people off at stops along approved routes.
Campbell added most people moving into the development will have their own mode of transportation, as the project is for essential workers, first and foremost.
“It’s for young professionals out of college,” he said, “teachers, police officers, public employees.”
It’s not the first development Campbell has underway in the area. He bought roughly 20 acres surrounding New Beginning Christian Church years ago with a vision to develop it for affordable housing. A senior development project broke ground last year and will consist of 68 single-story units when complete, with applications opening this October.
Sparks said he also spoke against the senior development and definitely does not support double the amount of units coming in for the multi-family neighborhood.
“Not here — not this number,” he said. “I love my neighbors here at New Beginnings — great church people — but they don’t live in my neighborhood.”
That the adjacent senior development will consist of single-story homes is an issue Pierce took up, when compared to the two- and three-story structures of Covenant Family Community. She was concerned about consistency with nearby single-family neighborhoods.
Campbell said it was more cost effective to build another floor than an entirely new foundation.
“Since we started this project, the price of housing went up 53%,” Campbell said.
Barfield was quick to point out that Rachel’s Place also has two-story alongside one-story homes and noted when it came before the board years ago, there were no issues in its approval.
“Everything that New Beginning has brought, there’s always been opposition — deep history in that particular community, that particular part of our county,” Barfield said, adding he wouldn’t go into details but called it “rigid” and “rough.”
The commissioner also reminded his colleagues they had signed off to spend a lot of money on infrastructure — water and sewer needs — in the northern part of the county, where the remainder of land exists. The funding was precisely to bring forth development.
“This is the type of project we need in the Castle Hayne area to encourage development,” Barfield said, adding that Wilmington is transitioning and constantly changing. “We are investing in that area to grow.”
Zapple called Clark Hipp to the lectern to ask about the planning board’s thought process on denying the project. Hipp serves with six others on the board and cited density as the biggest issue, though the board also didn’t like the mix of stories, nor how it seemed “massive” compared to other nearby structures. Hipp added there wasn’t a lot of yardage from the building design to the street either.
“At some point in time, if you’re going to buy affordable housing, you have to give up something,” Commissioner Chair Bill Rivenbark chimed in.
Campbell reminded commissioners there was a crisis underway with affordable housing, not just countywide but nationwide. More importantly, he challenged them to live up to their own goals and help chip away at solutions.
“We have to make some decisions,” Campbell said. “In your 2016 Comprehensive Land Use Plan, you stated very clearly — right up front — that workforce housing and economic development are top priorities. You repeated it in your strategic plan in 2024. Well, they go together; if you have a business and you don’t have a place for your police officers to stay, your teachers to stay, then they live in other counties.”
He was alluding to the fact they will essentially spend a majority of their salary in the county of their residence — to pay rent, taxes, utilities, groceries, etc.
John Hinnant, who is running for a commissioner seat in 2024 and spoke during the public hearing, was in favor the project. He mentioned a statistic UNCW economic professor Mouhcine Guettabi had posted recently.
“New Hanover County has 95,000 primary jobs in our community,” Hinnant stated to commissioners. “28% of those jobs commute from outside of our metropolitan statistical area. … That’s on the other side of Pender or on the other side of Brunswick County — 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour in the car. It is possible that if we can move those jobs to live closer to their work, it will ease congestion on our roads.”
John Vincent, a member of New Beginnings Church and also board member for New H.O.P.E. — Campbell’s nonprofit focused on tackling housing and rental assistance needs in the community — reminded council the common metric is for people to only spend 25% or 30% of their annual income on housing. A CPA, financial planner and real estate investor and broker, Vincent broke it down:
“You know what that equates to here? You’d have to make $67,000 to afford a $1,400 month apartment. And that’s what we are addressing. We are addressing affordability for workforce housing.”
Tom Gale — a realtor and vice chair of the ioint city and county Workforce Housing Advisory Committee — also wanted to see the development come to fruition.
“53% of the county’s residents are housing cost burdened and the area rents have gone up 51% in the last five years. Increasing housing supply is a critical way to help address these issues,” Gale said.
He added the county is seeing a shortfall of 3,000 units annually, according to the 2023 Bowen Housing Needs Assessment.
Campbell asked everyone in the meeting to stand up who was for workforce housing, in which a majority did. He was quick to add:
“Those who need workforce housing and those who qualify, usually, they don’t come to this meeting — they are working, they can’t afford to. So we need somebody to stand up for them in our community.”
Most commissioners agreed and voted to pass the project.
Now with zoning approved, the next step is to pursue funding — including tax credits, grants and traditional loans. A timeline to break ground is not known at this time.
Campbell reminded commissioners it took eight years for the senior project to reach groundbreaking.
“We needed the rezoning first,” he told Pierce earlier in the meeting, upon her question if an application was being put forth for tax credit housing. “Even if it’s approved today and we did it within three years, if we got the funding, that would be a record.”
The senior project is backed by East Carolina Community Development, for which Campbell is a board member, through a $1.5 million loan from New Hanover County; commissioners approved the 20-year term and 2% interest rate last fall. ECCD is also backing the Covenant Family Community project as well.
Last month, Hansen Matthews from the planning board asked Campbell how the project would be funded and if it would be from LITEK (low-income housing tax credit). Barfield took issue with the line of questioning at the end of the commissioners’ meeting Monday.
“I want to make sure that our planning board and our planning staff understand, but that question is not germane to their job,” Barfield said. “In my 15 years on this board, I’ve never had any board or commissioner or planning staff ask any developer where they get their money from. The question is off-limits; it’s a question that should have never been posed to begin with. It’s not germane to your job as a planning board member or my job as a county commissioner.”
[The article has been updated to reflect Bill Rivenbark as chair, not Charlie, his brother who serves on Wilmington City Council. PCD regrets the error.]
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