The Avenue.

Project Grace.

Galleria.

The short words signify a much larger idea – the potential addition of nearly $500 million in mixed-use developments in Wilmington. But a growing preference for mixed-use development has come with potential hurdles.

New Hanover County’s Project Grace could add hotel rooms, apartments, offices and retail space to a county-owned downtown block at a cost of $76 million to $120 million.

From the planning side, said Jennifer Rigby, the county’s strategy and policy coordinator who has been spearheading Project Grace, mixed-use projects allow for the consolidation and effective use of water, sewer and roads while helping to alleviate traffic congestion. 
It’s also something millennials and baby boomers are clamoring for because of the walkability and convenience mixed-use areas are supposed to provide.

“You’ve got the planners saying this is a much more efficient way to grow and a much more sustainable way to grow, and then you have the consumer saying, ‘This is what we want,’ and so it creates an opportunity for great success,” Rigby said.

But out-of-date land regulations present potential problems, Rigby said, though the county’s and city’s rules are currently undergoing an overhaul. While any momentum for Project Grace will be up to public officials, two private developers have hit the pause button on their plans because of recent roadblocks.

Roy Carroll, founder, president and CEO of Greensboro-based The Carroll Companies, and Jeff Kentner, president of State Street Companies, shared their views on the benefits and challenges they’ve been facing as they separately try to develop mixed-use projects in Wilmington. 

Carroll is working on The Avenue, a $200 million Westin-anchored community that would be built over 10 years on Military Cutoff Road. 
Kentner, whose company is based in Charlotte, is planning a more than $160 million project on the former Galleria site on Wrightsville Avenue, starting with upscale single - family homes. 

“Most municipalities right now are really pushing mixed-use. For example, if we went to Charlotte right now and tried to do something, we could not do something anywhere in the Charlotte downtown or core unless there was a mixed-use component to it because municipalities are concerned. They want live-work-play environments – everybody,” Carroll said.  “And Wilmington – that’s what we were told two years ago [about The Avenue plan]. ‘Create mixed-use. We really don’t want to see a stand-alone multi-family again.’”

But Carroll’s efforts to seek approval from the city’s Planning Commission for The Avenue have been delayed after a Wilmington city staff report said Military Cutoff is the “wrong location” because of the anticipation of an exponential increase in traffic. 

Carroll refutes that assertion and plans to come back to the Planning Commission with The Avenue in November. 

Could Wilmington afford to lose a project like The Avenue or Airlie at Wrightsville Sound, the trade name for the Galleria site project?

“Changing the land-use pattern in Wilmington from single-use, suburban sprawl development to mixed-use development is critical for the city’s future,” Kentner, developer of Airlie at Wrighstville Sound, said. “The current development pattern is unsustainable and is a deterrent to economic growth.”

To read the rest of this story, see the July 28 edition of the Greater Wilmington Business Journal.