If city officials grant a requested rezoning of property near Mayfaire, new apartments and commercial space could be on the way to the growing area.

The city of Wilmington Planning Commission will consider a rezoning request at a meeting next week for 9.35 acres at West Westwood Drive off Military Cutoff Road, according to the panel's latest agenda. The property would change from a Manufactured Home Park District to an Office & Institutional Conditional District, which would allow a mixed-use development of 228 apartments and 15,500 square feet of commercial space.

The apartment community would consist of six, four-story buildings, said Matt Maynard, co-director of Tribute Investment & Development Inc., the company planning the project. Two of the buildings would have frontage on Military Cutoff Road, Maynard said, and those two would also contain the commercial space on the first floor, with residential units in the top three floors.

Maynard said Tribute is referring to the community as Arboretum West for the time being. If officials give the rezoning a green light, the developers hope to break ground on the mixed-use development soon afterward, he said.  

“We really like this site because of its great access to so many different parts of Wilmington. It is only a couple minutes’ drive to either Wrightsville Beach or Porters Neck, and downtown is a straight shot down Market,” Maynard said. “It also doesn’t hurt that you can walk to Mayfaire from there.”

Currently, there are some manufactured homes on the property that are all owned by a single owner and rented to tenants, he said. Tribute has the property under contract, and brokers Brian Eckel and Paul Loukas of Cape Fear Commercial are representing the seller, Arboretum West LLC.

The rezoning request for the West Westwood Drive property is on the Wilmington Planning Commission agenda for the commission's meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 7 in City Council Chambers, City Hall, 102 N. Third St.

The Arboretum West project isn’t the only apartment development in the works in the Mayfaire/Landfall area. On property across Military Cutoff Road from Mayfaire Town Center, a different developer plans to build an apartment complex on 3.36 acres at 1817 Sir Tyler Drive, according to plans submitted earlier this year to the city of Wilmington. Construction on the 120-unit community, called Westfall Park Apartments, could start next month, developer DPJ Residential’s website says, in an undated post.