Plan would cap home sizes on Currituck OBX

BARCO, N.C.

A 23-bedroom, 13,461-square-foot resort mansion in Corolla may be one and done, based on an outline of possible changes to the Currituck County's development ordinance. It's the first top-to-bottom rewrite in 21 years.

Begun late last year, the development ordinance rewrite will cost $223,711 and is expected to be completed by late summer 2011.

The proposed changes, released last week, could restrict the size of houses on the Currituck Outer Banks to 5,000 square feet, protect trees older than 50 years to preserve the rural character of the community and require developers to hold neighborhood meetings.

Concessions to developers include streamlining the permit process and eliminating minimum lot dimensions in some subdivisions.

The document is an assortment of laws that govern community planning, such as how businesses along the main highway would look and how neighborhoods are built.

Communities such as Moyock, Barco and Grandy would become development centers and agricultural areas such as Shawboro would remain more open, closely following a land use plan approved four years ago.

"It's going to be cheaper, easier, faster and better" to build within a community center, said Chad Meadows, a senior planner with

Clarion Associates, a Chapel Hill firm doing the revision.

Under the community center concept, each area would be more distinct, said Ben Woody, director of the Currituck County Planning Department.

"They would have more of a sense of place," he said.

Landowners in farming areas protested the land use plan, saying they would lose property value.

But in this revision, they could get high dollar for their land by developing conservation subdivisions that cluster homes in one section and leave the rest open, Woody said.

Setbacks and limits on lot sizes could be done away with, allowing for more homes. Landowners would not have to get the tract rezoned to residential.

The revised ordinance makes into law the guidelines from the land use plan, a more serious consideration for developers, said Willo Kelly, director of government affairs for the Outer Banks Home Builders Association.

Builders are most concerned about limits on house sizes, having to save trees that might stand where a house would go and requiring developers to hold neighborhood meetings for large projects.

Nearly 30 local, state and federal agencies already oversee the construction industry, she said.

"Year after year, it's getting more expensive to build," Kelly said. "People are hurting now and they don't want to hear anything where government is going to step in and make it harder to do business."

Restrictions such as those on home sizes could reduce occupancy taxes, a fee charged tourists in rental homes that generates about $9 million annually for the county, she said.

Homes larger than 5,000 square feet could require a special use permit, so the draft document doesn't eliminate the possibility of building huge resort homes such as the one in Swan Island Estates.

Woody said the concept about limiting homes to 5,000 square feet came from local residents in earlier meetings.

Public meetings on the proposed changes will be held Oct. 12 at the historic courthouse and Oct. 13 at the Corolla library. After getting public input, plans are to release draft versions during late winter, early spring of 2011.

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com