NEW HANOVER COUNTY (WWAY) — New Hanover County Commissioners voted Tuesday evening to rezone property along Carolina Beach Road for development.
The 7.27-acre property is located off South Seabreeze Road, parallel to Carolina Beach Road.
Originally, 18 large homes were to be built on the property.
New Hanover County Commissioners voted 3-to-2 vote in favor of a rezoning that would change that development to 46 smaller townhouses.
Dane Scalise is one of the commissioners who voted in favor of the rezoning.
He said addressing the concerns of residents in the area is one of the reasons he supports the change.
“As I understood the concerns that were expressed to me via email, a lot of the folks were worried about traffic and they were worried about the impact on the schools,” Scalise said. “But whenever I dug into the data, the traffic and the school impact were very, very small. And so, I tried to remove emotion from the equation and recognize that if we need to increase housing volume in New Hanover County, this is one of the places to do it.”
However, many Seabreeze residents were against the rezoning.
Sandra Ross has lived there for more than 20 years.
While Ross knew the property would eventually be developed, she wonders whether the commissioners would ever want to live there.
“What I would have liked to have said, had a chance to say to the commissioners was “Would you move your family here, knowing what is going to transpire,” Ross said. “Would you like to keep your family here if you’d been a resident all your life?”
At this time, we don’t know when construction of those townhomes will begin.