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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Aldermen reject proposal for Scotchman lot

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The former Scotchman on Salisbury Street in Wrightsville Beach will remain vacant, as town leaders turned down another attempt by developers to make use of the empty lot.

During its Oct. 13 meeting, the board of aldermen unanimously voted down a proposal to rezone part of the commercial lot to residential to redevelop the lots separately. The aldermen agreed they could not allow one of the town’s few remaining commercial lots to become residential.

Mayor Pro-Tem Darryl Mills, who led the meeting in place of absent Mayor Bill Blair, said he was committed to preventing the “draining away of the local services and commercial opportunities” on the island.

New Carolina Properties managing partner Frank Martin had requested the town rezone part of 100 W. Salisbury St. to residential so a single-family home could be built there. The vacant convenience store on the remaining commercial lot would be used by the adjacent stand-up paddleboard business, Wrightsville SUP.

The town’s land-use plan encourages the creation of commercial establishments, but the town code also allows for mixed-use developments that typically have one floor commercial and one floor residential. Martin urged the board to think of his plan as a horizontal mixed-use development.

“It meets the spirit of the mixed-use ordinance if not the letter,” he said.

He had tried for a year to design a conventional mixed-use development at the site, he said, and it was not possible due to the lot’s unique dimensions. He said the lot, as it stands, is “unsuitable for retail” because it has been on the market for two years and several developers have tried and failed to design a feasible project.

Wrightsville SUP owner Jarrod Covington and Realtor Jim Wallace spoke in favor of the rezoning. Covington assured board members he would only use the former Scotchman structure for simple retail or refreshments that complemented his paddleboard business. Wallace vouched for the viability of the residential lot, saying he sold a property down the road recently and this lot was “even more desirable because it’s wider.”

Despite these pleas, the aldermen stood by their land-use plan. Alderwoman Elizabeth King said she came to the meeting hoping to hear a “compelling reason to vote for the rezoning” and she didn’t. Alderwoman Lisa Weeks added while Wrightsville SUP was a wonderful and thriving business for the island, its popularity was reason not to build a multi-million dollar home right next door.

All board members agreed it was their duty to preserve commercial opportunities on the island. Weeks said she ran for office partly because a commercial lot on the other side of Salisbury Street was rezoned to residential after the Pizza Hut was torn down. That residential lot has yet to be sold, she pointed out.

“I also saw some other commercial properties [around town] being rezoned to residential. It was a concern of mine and many of my constituents that we were moving down a path to slowly becoming a neighborhood instead of a viable town.”

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