NEW HANOVER COUNTY — “We’ve really struggled with this whole entire text amendment — this whole entire comprehensive plan,” planning board member Cameron Moore said Thursday evening. “What is the true vision over there?”
READ MORE: Residential use removed from western bank amendment, commissioner asks to postpone vote
He was referring to New Hanover County staff’s two-plus years of research that helped inform designating place types for the western bank along the Cape Fear River. Moore and some other board members weren’t convinced the draft amendment brought forth Thursday fully realized a vision, prompted as a need by county commissioners to address in the 2016 comprehensive plan.
The New Hanover County planning board denied staff recommendations in a 3-1 vote, with Clark Hipp in favor. Hansen Matthews and Kevin Hine were absent from the meeting and chair Jeffrey Petroff recused himself at its start. Petroff is a partner of CLD Engineering, involved in the Wilmington Hotel and Spa project, a 146-room hotel proposed to be built on the western bank.
“My belief is there are still a lot of unknowns,” Moore said, adding he wanted commissioners to give them more guardrails as it takes up the amendment changes next month.
The western bank amendment proposed by staff includes the classification of land changing from the heaviest density of urban mixed-use place type to low-density riverfront for privately owned parcels and conservation for public land. This differs from what was put forth to the planning board in April, wherein it was all pitched as downtown riverfront.
Staff also removed residential and office/institutional uses. There is an environmental concern for parcels on Eagles Island, located near the Battleship, that have seen at least 1,000 sunny-day flooding events in the last decade.
Instead, staff has encouraged development less susceptible to flooding, via commercial, recreational, and civic/institutional uses, and suggests ones that provide a public benefit, such as parks. Any buildings constructed cannot be taller than the U.S.S. North Carolina, to remain the focal point of the western bank area.
Some planning board members took issue over the lack of residences, particularly worried about legalities of telling private property owners what they can and cannot do on their land. Almost a dozen parcels on the western bank are privately owned.
County staff didn’t recommend residences in April either when they first brought the draft amendment forth, but at the planning board’s behest added it back, along with mixed-uses. Both were removed again last week after more than half of the 2,500 public comments that came into the county were against development, most asking for greenways, blueways, and trails.
Although Vice Chair Colin Tarrant voted against staff recommendation Thursday, he acknowledged and agreed with public concerns, stating development in the area could be problematic, due to flooding. Yet, he took issue with imposing overly strict regulations on the place type, such as removing residential language.
“I’m a believer that we should keep it broader than this,” Tarrant said. “I do want to make sure everyone understands that I’m not sitting here saying: ‘We need to put multifamily over there across the river in any way or shape.’”
Tarrant suggested residential developments should be a potential option for the planning board and commissioners to consider on a case-by-case basis at least.
Moore wanted to know more about how the zoning would change. Senior planner Rebekah Roth told Port City Daily last month the current zoning allowed in the area is regional business and industrial. Those will be the next changes discussed in the amendment after place type is agreed upon.
If commissioners pass this amendment with a place type but not a zoning plan, Moore was concerned it would allow for inconsistencies in the UDO. For instance, currently the regional business zoned land on the western bank still allows for hotels and motels, despite the fact that the place type could be low intensity.
Roth also clarified to the planning board that if a residential development came forth under an approved low intensity place type, staff would not recommend its approval.
Hipp emphasized to board members that commissioners asked staff to come up with an alternative place type for now, which they’ve done. “So our responsibility tonight is to evaluate what they have presented,” he added. “And I think they’ve done a good job.”
Moore made the approved motion to reject the staff’s amendment changes but included recommendations. He suggested the county bring in a consultant to help develop a “true” master plan of the western bank and conduct a market analysis of the properties there, to understand the tax values.
“I’d like to ask the commissioners to put this on hold potentially, as a shelf item, but allow us and instruct staff to start working on the zoning aspects of it,” Moore said.
Public feedback
In attendance were upward of a dozen concerned citizens, representatives for a coalition of advocacy groups, and experts and private property owners. All were in opposition to the amendment, yet for different reasons. Advocacy groups didn’t want to see development; property owners wanted more.
Kirk Pugh of KFJ Development — behind the proposed Battleship Point, consisting of condos and apartments once proposed for Point Peter — asked for the planning board not to “penalize” him or others who own parcels on the western bank.
“[We] have spent decades cultivating land on the west bank to hopefully one day get a reward for what the value of the land is,” Pugh said.
His land is zoned industrial use currently and requires a rezone to move forward as Battleship Point. Pugh said low intensity development on the western bank would not be feasible due to the expense to run utilities, such as water and sewer, and elevate land or roads. The planning board has been clear if residences or high intensity is allowed that those costs will fall on the private sector, not be burdened by taxpayers.
“The cost of elevating Point Harbor Road to the extent that it’s safe for people, ingress and egress, in sunny day flooding and storm events, to me, logically, not only enables but almost invites continued use for the properties on the west bank in a nature that I think we all agree nobody wants — which is heavy industrial — because low density, low impact is not viable financially,” Pugh said.
Much of the land is considered brownfields, due to maritime industries that were once set up across the river, and would be expensive to clean up. Commissioners have stated they do not want to see industrial uses moving forward and want the area remediated.
Tarrant said placing it low density could have “an unintended opposite effect” due to a developer’s steep financial obligations to clean up brownfields. In other words any type of development there would need to be high intensity to make up for the investment or it may remain industrial.
Pugh’s team has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars already on cleanup efforts on KFJ’s land. He would not speak to PCD after the meeting; however, he told the outlet last fall the development group would downsize the Battleship Point project if need be, according to what the county comes up with in its amendment.
Pugh added in the meeting: “Many of the groups who are speaking out against any development on the west bank today are the same groups that endorsed the riverfront mixed use back in 2007.”
The goal for that side of the river 17 years ago was to mirror the current downtown riverfront. Yet, flooding increases have impacted the outlook.
Roger Shew, geologist at UNCW, told the board during public comment he thinks the frequency and intensity of flooding in the area will get worse. He personally counted 77 days in the last six months with waters rising along roads on that side of the river.
“I know someone says just a little water. Well, that’s just not true,” he said.
Shew pointed to a map showing only 14 of 77 acres on the western bank are above 4 feet in elevation.
“This is one of the lowest and most hazardous areas in all of New Hanover County for flooding,” Shew said.
Matt Collogan, the vice chair on the board of supervisors for the New Hanover Soil and Water Conservation District, added Eagles Island — which also runs into Brunswick County — floods 108 days a year. He explained a lot of the western bank is located in a 100-year floodplain, mostly 4 feet below sea level.
“Placing infrastructure and buildings in an extremely hazardous compound and flood zone is unfortunate,” Collogan said, “and would put people in structures of great safety and economic risk while also negatively impacting the area’s valuable ecosystems.”
Retired physician Robert Parr pointed out New Hanover County is surrounded by three sides of flooding tidal waters — Atlantic Ocean, Cape Fear River, Northeast Cape Fear River. The western bank is surrounded by two, which the National Weather Service has identified as a frequent flooding area.
“We need to critically assess where we are building and how we are incentivizing risk — and if the county is incentivizing risk, the county is part of the problem,” he said.
Travis Gilbert represented multiple coalitions, including the Historic Wilmington Foundation, Cape Fear Sierra Club, Eagles Island Central Park Task Force, the North Carolina Gullah Geechee Greenway Blueway Heritage Trail and Coastal Federation. He said the public comments the county received on the draft amendment showcased the largest outpouring of support he’s witnessed in county government in the last decade.
While Gilbert pointed out flooding and conservation is at the crux of the issue, he also believed the western side of the Cape Fear River should be revered for its main attraction: the Battleship, which brings in more than 100,000 visitors annually.
“New Hanover County has the awesome responsibility of being stewards of a memorial that represents 11,000 lives lost to defend freedom in this world during World War Two,” Gilbert said, adding high intensity development would “fundamentally change” experiences they have at the memorial. “The current landscape of the western bank promotes an experience of reverence, solemnness befitting of that memorial.”
The Battleship most recently started a $4.1 million project Living With Water, to build up wetlands and the parking lot with environmentally friendly ecological solutions due to sunny-day flooding.
The western bank is also historic to Gullah Geechee people who once cultivated the land, much of it formerly rice plantations. Many people, including the Eagles Island Task Force, have called for that area’s preservation to recognize the historical heritage.
CATCH UP: West bank development, climate change threaten newly discovered Gullah Geechee artifacts
Kayne Darrell approached the board, questioning why the community was even talking about development of the area. She cited the overwhelming evidence and data that area conservationists and scientists have provided to the county.
“These folks are truly treasures in our community, continually sharing their expertise, their wealth of knowledge, their understanding of the facts and the issues with no agenda other than to advocate for the best interests of this community that they live in and obviously care about deeply,” Darrell said. “I would hope that as you consider your decision tonight you do it with the gratitude and respect deserving of those who work so hard to provide you and your staff with overwhelming evidence that any development of the west bank is a really bad idea.”
The planning board wasn’t against the idea of conservation along the western bank, but many also were clear it would still take resources and investments.
“As far as turning it into a conservation zone, I think it’s great,” board member Pete Avery said. “But it does take money to do that.”
Moore said it’s not always a lot of buildings and high-intensity that make up the term “development.” It could be a multi-use path as discussed in the Eagles Island Park plan, or if a new Cape Fear Memorial Bridge is built with paths to connect the western and eastern banks. It could be parks, kayak launches, or even another riverwalk.
“I’m coming at it from outside of just the core periphery of the western bank,” he said. “There’s going to be costs to that, and it’s going to be significantly higher due to many of the constraints that we discussed. You just can’t have the public dollars. If the private sector is not willing to come to the table to help, I don’t see that transformation ever happening.”
Hipp said as a resident he agrees with most of the public, that conservation should be considered heavily. However, he also weighed the viability of what it means for private property owners.
“I’m not sure that we have — or the county has — the power to take away the rights of those property owners to develop their property, and I believe calling it a conservation place type would attempt to do that,” he said.
Tarrant agreed, saying it would be a “taking of sorts” of their land without legal basis, to not allow any development without compensating them.
“But the alternative that’s being presented, the low intensity place type,” Hipp added and favored, “is certainly in the right direction.”
The planning board’s recommendations to the amendments will go in front of commissioners at its August meeting.
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