Developer renews fight to build in Outer Banks

CAROVA

A developer plans another try at building a motel and shops where the wild horses roam in Currituck County's northern Outer Banks.

Longtime Outer Banks developer Gerald Friedman seeks to get nearly 26 acres rezoned for business in the Swan Beach community for a project he's attempted at least two other times. The rezoning request goes before county commissioners May 16.

"Frankly, I am astonished at the continued position of the County to deny my client his right to construct buildings for commercial use on his business parcels," Bryan Plumlee, a Chesapeake attorney representing Friedman, wrote in an email to the county March 30.

Over the years, Friedman has contended the northern Outer Banks communities, first platted more than 40 years ago, included sections for business.

Friedman's tract in Swan Beach was set aside for commercial use on an original plat dated Sept. 2, 1969, and signed by the chairman of the county's Board of Commissioners, the register of deeds and the clerk to the board, said Friedman's son, Chip, who also is a developer.

The four-wheel-drive area was zoned residential in the 1970s, and that takes precedence over the original plats, said Ben Woody, director of the Currituck County Planning Department. The area falls under the federal Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which discourages development. The area also falls under the county's land-use plan, which limits business growth.

The Army Corps of Engineers is even balking at allowing the county to grade large mud holes along one of the main unpaved roads. The mud holes are considered wetlands.

"At some point you have to say this area is not viable for commercial," Woody said.

But in his letter, Plumlee named several home-based businesses in the area, including sand mining, excavating, crane operation and the 23-bedroom home used for weddings.

Residential zoning in the four-wheel-drive area allows home-based businesses, but some violate the ordinance, Woody acknowledged.

"We have to determine when has a home-based business gone too far," he said.

Home-based businesses are allowed one commercial vehicle. Since getting Plumlee's letter, Woody and a code officer have canvassed the area and found at least six home businesses violating the ordinance. They will be cited, he said.

For the area originally platted with a total of 3,150 lots in the late 1960s and early 1970s, records show 661 homes in communities including Carova Beach, Swan Beach and North Swan Beach. The entire area encompasses more than 7,000 acres on a strip a mile wide and about 12 miles long to the Virginia line. Wild horses roam in preserved tracts such as the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge and among homes, at times grazing in people's front yards.

In the 1960s, developers expected paved roads would come through. But Virginia established False Cape State Park, and beyond that the federal government created Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

The establishment of those preserves prevented paved roads from the north. Currituck National Wildlife Refuge and the Currituck Banks North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve stand in the way of paved roads from Corolla at the south.

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