The developers of Mayfaire West, a proposal that could bring close to 500 new apartments, carriage houses and townhomes to the Mayfaire area, detailed their plans and fielded resident questions and concerns during a community meeting this week. 

Officials with project developer BrodyCo say the planned community, slated for around 42 acres between Town Center Drive and Gregory Road, would include 256 apartments and 223 carriage houses and townhomes.

Dozens of residents, including those from the Windemere, Eastwood Village and Parkside neighborhoods, turned out Tuesday to learn about the project, ask questions and voice concerns about the project's density and how the development could affect the area’s existing residents, along with ongoing traffic and stormwater issues.

Following Tuesday’s meeting, Windemere resident Shannon Hufham created a Facebook page, Concerned Neighbors of Mayfaire West, to serve as a forum for residents to share information and updates. Hufham grew up in Windemere and has lived on Gregory Road for the last 11 years.

“When we purchased our house, we thought this was going to be a single-family dwelling development behind us, and that was our expectation,” Hufham said. “So getting the letter, finding out that there's a request for rezoning, and finding out that they want to put 500 residents in this small area is just concerning.”

Hufham said her top concern is the proposed apartments because of the density they would bring to the area.

“I think most residents would be able to accept this a little easier if it were just the town homes, the carriage homes, and not the apartments. That’s just adding so many more people,” she said.

BrodyCo, which also served as a co-developer of Mayfaire Town Center, purchased the property slated for Mayfaire West about 10 years ago, said Hyman Brody, the company’s president and CEO.

“There's been a tremendous amount of interest in this property, but we felt like we were the right ones to retain it and to build something that we thought was special,” he said at Tuesday's meeting.

“Projects like these, they come around just so few times in a lifetime, and what's happened in Mayfaire in the last 25 years, and what we think this can do will certainly segue and be a good project going forward into the future,” Brody added.

Scott Stewart, of Demarest Company, served as the project’s land planner and said he aimed to design the project around the existing neighborhoods and landscape. That included preserving trees and greenspace on the property, implementing roundabouts and other traffic calming tools and locating the project’s multifamily buildings toward the center of the property to provide a buffer from the existing neighborhoods.

Developers plan to ask the city to rezone the site from its current R-15, moderate-density single-dwelling district, and a mixed-use district to a conditional MD-10 and MD-17, medium- and high-density multiple-dwelling residential districts, respectively, according to Sam Franck, an attorney representing BrodyCo.

A traffic study of the project is still being finalized, officials said Tuesday. For Anna Marie Turner, who’s lived on Gregory Road for 38 years, the additional traffic the project could create is a big issue.

“Everybody's got their own hot-button issues. For some, it's stormwater; for some, it's density or green space. My biggest concern is traffic,” she said.

Since the construction of Mayfaire, Turner said, cut-through traffic has gotten worse in Windemere. The neighborhood doesn’t have sidewalks, she added, which can make taking a walk dangerous. Adding more units nearby will only add to the number of cars driving through the neighborhood, she said.

Franck said the developers expect to submit a rezoning application to the city of Wilmington later this month, and they expect the rezoning will go before the Wilmington Planning Commission and Wilmington City Council for consideration this summer.