NEW HANOVER COUNTY — An 11-building business park will transform roughly 20 acres of rural land in Castle Hayne over the next decade.
Monday, county officials rezoned nearly 30 acres at 312 Hermitage Rd. from residential property to a commercial district. The move allows the property owner to construct a 130,000-square-foot business park, with just under 9 acres preserved for an existing nursery. It will be built in phases.
Like other parts of the unincorporated county, the area was previously zoned for spaced-out homes when public utilities were scarce and individual dwellings needed private wells and septic. Infrastructure has expanded since then, and the developer plans to connect to the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority system and bring in a private septic system.
Plans call for 11 buildings, reaching around 40 feet in height. Each would house about three to four units and range in size from 9,000- to 12,000-square-feet. The structures will take up about 14% of the site and likely accommodate mostly warehousing, with a small front portion withholding offices.
“It is industrial flex space, but it is really targeted to things like contractors and the types of businesses that supply contractors,” Paramounte Engineering’s Allison Engebretson told county commissioners Monday.
To the east of the site, some light industrial uses exist, benefitting from the proximity to I-140, the railroad and the airport, which is about five miles away. The tract is located east of Castle Hayne Road and west of Blue Clay Road.
Engebretson pointed out although the land is surrounded by farms and is largely undeveloped, the county has envisioned this area in its future land use plan as an “employment and production hub where office and light industrial uses predominate.”
“Our site along Hermitage Road is specifically referred to as an ideal place for something that could offer goods and services, outside of residential areas, and something that could provide jobs and new opportunities in our community,” she said.
Fast Tracts Wilmington, LLC acquired the land in question for $850,000 in March 2018, according to property records. The owner, Andy Etters, has built up a nursery toward the back of the parcel and plans to keep the operation thriving as the development is erected at the front of the lot, according to Engebretson.
A large stormwater pond will sit closest to the residential homes, about 300 to 500 feet away. The tract also neighbors North Carolina State University’s 58-acres agricultural research farms.
Commissioner Rob Zapple raised some concerns that, without a signalized intersection, lines of cars heading in and out of the business park will be backed up at a stop sign on Hermitage Road to turn onto Castle Hayne Road. According to a traffic impact analysis, the business park is projected to draw in over 2,000 vehicles daily to the site.
“It seems like an awful lot to come down to be confronted by simply a stop sign going onto Castle Hayne,” Zapple said, “which during shift changes at GE can be pretty busy.”
Engebretson clarified the park will be built in phases and take 10 years to complete. There are no known plans by the N.C. Department of Transportation to improve that intersection during that time span, she added.
“As we well know, many things can happen in 10 years,” she added. “Castle Hayne is a growing area, and I’m sure that this will be growing along with it.”
Plans for the business park incorporate two new turn lanes that will divvy up the traffic.
“We do think that the vast majority of the traffic is going to that intersection. However, the traffic there today is relatively low,” said Rynal Stephenson, of the traffic analysis firm. “We’re on the order of magnitude of two cars per minute roughly.”
Still, the plans passed unanimously, with Zapple accepting they cannot predict the future and saying he expects a lot of commercial growth near the “incredibly desirable” site.
Development plans must undergo a technical review prior to construction. Tenants of the flex space business park will be defined during that process, according to county planning documents.
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