The Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen will hear from residents, developers and other stakeholders during its meeting this Thursday about whether to approve a special zoning district that would raise the town’s height limit restrictions for the lot by Johnnie Mercer’s Pier. The topic of raising the 40-foot height limit has been fraught with controversy, with many residents expressing fear that increasing the height limit would lead to even more high-rise buildings, while developers argue that they couldn’t profitably build within the height limit, proposing a 50-foot limit exclusively for the vacant lot.
While the focus may be on Thursday’s public hearing, Wrightsville Beach Mayor Bill Blair said an item later on the town’s meeting agenda may offer a better path to addressing the controversial issue, as the board will choose from 23 applicants for as many as nine open seats for the steering committee to review the town’s land use plan.
“It is important that we’re not doing things arbitrarily. It should be done in a comprehensive way,” Blair said of the controversial proposal.
In addition to holding the public hearing on the mixed-use overlay district, the board will select members for the steering committee to review and potentially make changes to the land use plan, which is required for any coastal municipality by the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA). With the aid of a $15,000 grant, the town will review its land use plan for the first time since 2005.
Blair said that’s important, since the town’s planning staff recommends rejecting the mixed-use overlay district proposal primarily on the grounds that it is inconsistent with the 2005 land use plan.
“We use the CAMA land use plan as our guiding document for development and land use,” Blair said. “If we start doing one-off projects, we’ll end up with a hodge-podge of development that could go to extremes.”
The board of aldermen has rejected proposals to raise the height limit in the past, including as recently as 2015, when it unanimously voted against a measure that would allow the town’s staff to accept and consider projects that were higher than 40 feet.
The town’s planning board voted unanimously Sept. 7 to approve the new zoning district, going against the staff recommendation, with Chairman Ken Dull, a building contractor, observing that raising the height limit should be something that should at least be part of the discussion.
“We need positive things to happen on the beach, especially in places that sit derelict,” Dull said during the meeting. “People on the beach need direction.”
The mixed-use overlay district was proposed by Coastal N.C. Real Estate, which has forwarded plans for a development project called The Island Center that would include restaurants, retail and residential housing in the lot that is presently vacant. The town has already approved a similar mixed-use project for the lot from the same developers, who said the ground-floor retail units couldn’t meet flood zone regulations.
Proponents, including former alderman Joseph Taylor, a senior real estate attorney at Wilmington’s Murchison, Taylor & Gibson law firm, argue the overlay district would only apply to the vacant lot and that new flooding regulations make it difficult to profitably develop within the height limits set in the 1970s.
Additionally, the proposal would only create a new zoning district, and the town’s planning board and board of aldermen would still have to vote to apply that district to the vacant lot to support a proposed project at a future date. The Island Center project is not up for consideration during Thursday’s public hearing.
One resident spoke against the zoning change during the September meeting, though similar proposals have drawn more strident public protest. Opponents argue that allowing a change would invite legal challenges to the height limit on other properties throughout the town, eventually changing the character of the town to more closely resemble the high-rise developments in places like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
“We live here because of the way this beach is. You’re not going to find another beach like it,” opponent David Monaghan said during the September planning board meeting.
Public opposition is another reason the town should consider addressing the issue through the more-comprehensive process of a land use plan review and rewrite, Blair said.
“It’s not just about the height limit, it has to fit with the fiber of the beach,” Blair said. “It has to have the support of people on the beach. There are a lot of residents that have a stake. My hope is that the CAMA land use plan steering committee will be representative of a unique blend of residents and businesses.”
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