Following resident concerns, the city of Wilmington will host a community meeting this week to discuss a proposed amendment that could affect development inside the city’s so-called legacy districts.

City staff introduced the proposed change to the Wilmington City Council at its May 21 meeting as one of several updates to the city’s Land Development Code. While staff said the update would help ensure consistency across the city’s zoning districts, residents raised concerns about its impact on density and watershed pollution.

The proposed change applies to development within areas classified as “watershed resource protection or conservation areas” on maps from the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA), according to documents from the city council’s May meeting. The city’s new Land Development Code, which went into effect on Dec. 1, 2021, limits density in these areas but offers developers a density bonus for “exceptional design.”

The proposed amendment would extend these “exceptional design” provisions into the city’s legacy districts, focusing on limits to the impervious surface rather than density, zoning administrator Kathryn Thurston told the council.

“When rewriting the land development code, staff recognized that impervious surface area impacted water quality in our tidal creeks and waterways more directly than density and decided to base exceptional design allowances on this metric alone,” Thurston said. “However, those provisions did not automatically carry over to the legacy districts even though staff continues to believe that this is the best management practice in these sensitive areas.”

Legacy districts are areas within the city that were not carried forward into the new Land Development Code because they’re seen as “antiquated districts,” Brian Chambers, assistant director of Wilmington’s Planning and Development Department, told the council in May.

“We didn’t want to do away with them, but we didn’t want them to expand,” he said.

The legacy districts include areas zoned MX, some multifamily districts, areas zoned UMX outside of the city’s 1945 corporate limits and the R-20 district, Thurston said.

Planning staff brought forward the amendment after recognizing inconsistencies in the districts.

“Staff recognized an inconsistency in how the current zoning districts were being treated versus the legacy districts and this was to bring consistency across both codes,” Chambers said.

However, several residents raised concerns about the impact of the change, especially regarding the potential for more density in areas around Autumn Hall and the impacts that could have on the area's existing neighborhoods.

Dogwood Drive resident Matt Childs told the city council in May that the amendment was a “significant concern."

“I stand before you because these proposed changes do not align with the city’s stated commitment to protecting our properties from stormwater flooding and our fisheries from harm and extinction,” he told the council before asking the city to complete a “comprehensive environmental impact study tied to the amendment.”

Consideration of the amendment was continued to the council’s June 18 meeting and then continued again to a date after a community meeting was held.

That meeting is scheduled to take place 6-8 p.m. on Thursday at the New Hanover County Government Center, 230 Government Center Drive.

City staff will overview the proposed amendment, review current development standards and hear resident feedback and questions. They will use the feedback from the meeting to determine the next steps in the amendment process, according to the meeting notice.