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Real Estate - Residential

City OKs Annexation Of 16 Acres On Market Street

By Cece Nunn, posted Jul 20, 2016
City officials approved Tuesday evening the annexation of about 16 acres of property on Market Street where a development company wants to add 287 apartments to an existing community.

The apartments will comprise the second phase of Amberleigh Shores and involve land in the 7700 and 7800 blocks of Market Street, just under two miles from Wilmington city limits. The property involved in the 282-unit first phase of the apartment community was annexed by the city in 2011.

“My clients want to be part of the city because it was so successful the first time with phase one,” said Tom Johnson, an attorney with the Raleigh office of law firm Nexsen Pruet, who represents Amberleigh Shores developer Flournoy Development.

In 2011, New Hanover County officials had voted against a rezoning request that would have allowed the first phase of Amberleigh Shores to move forward. In February 2011, according to a previous Greater Wilmington Business Journal story, city of Wilmington leaders annexed and rezoned the property for the development against the wishes of New Hanover County commissioners and residents of the Marsh Oaks neighborhood.

In 2013, the city of Wilmington changed its annexation policy to require that for any proposed development denied by the county, the developer cannot apply for annexation for six months. For Amberleigh Shores this time around, Georgia-based Flournoy Development and property owners of the county land involved did not try to go through the county to develop the second phase. 

No opposition was voiced Tuesday night regarding the annexation request, and the measure was approved by city council in a unanimous vote. Councilman Kevin O’Grady, however, did express concern about the impact of the expansion on the surrounding neighborhoods. The process to rezone the property to a city designation that would allow the second phase of apartments is still under way, with the rezoning request expected to come before the City Council at a meeting in the next couple of months, officials said. 

“We still will see, in the future some time, a plan. That’s when we’re going to have to be concerned about roads, setbacks and the point I’m going to make, because I’ve been making it a lot lately -- protecting the adjoining residential whether that residential is in the city or technically in the county,” O’Grady said before Tuesday night’s vote.

He said there’s a lot of concern in Marsh Oaks about the expansion.

“I don’t see an issue ... with the city annexing it, but there may be issues with the design. I will expect your client to do its best to minimize its impact on the adjoining neighborhoods,” O’Grady told Johnson on Tuesday night.

Johnson responded, “And we’ll certainly do that. What we’re proposing here is consistent with the joint city-county Market Street corridor study that was done in the past related ... specifically to development in this area. We’re taking a good bit of property that’s currently zoned B-2 [Highway Business District] that could be built as commercial property on Market Street and changing it to multi-family property, so that does make a significant difference in terms of what’s generally mentioned as concerns about traffic on Market street.”

The city’s staff supported the annexation and found that no unusual impact in service delivery is expected, said city manager Sterling Cheatham in the documents accompanying the request.

Glenn Harbeck, director of planning, development and transportation for Wilmington, said when state annexation statutes were changed in 2011, he remembers council members expressing support for growing the city’s tax base when there’s a willing property owner and if the cost of services the city would have to provide does not exceed the benefits that would come with new development. Part of the city’s voluntary annexation policy involves investigating whether the cost in terms of services would outweigh the benefits of the additional tax revenue.

Based on 292 apartments (later changed to 287) being added to Amberleigh Shores in phase two, the city would gain at least $600,000 more than it would have to spend on services like police, fire and parks and recreations, according to city documents. The effective date of the annexation is Aug. 1. 

Since 2011, four other voluntary annexation cases, aside from the two Amberleigh Shores requests, from property owners in New Hanover County have been handled by the city of Wilmington. The annexations involved property at 4900 S. College Road, 6469 Gordon Road, 4625 Carolina Beach Road and in the 7100 block of Market Street at Middle Sound Loop Road for the planned Publix-anchored Ogden Market Place.  

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