Wilmington/New Hanover County, North Carolina

Unified Development Ordinance 
   

For the City of Wilmington and New Hanover County, Duncan Associates consolidated their respective development regulations into one document. A major objective of the code update assignment was to smooth intergovernmental cooperation in the rural fringe area between these coastal jurisdictions. There has also been a substantial streamlining of and revision to the development review process, which will provide for a "universal development permit" procedure. The code update involved consolidation of several ordinances (e.g., zoning, subdivision, stormwater

management, mobile home park, sign, historic preservation) into a single document. The thing that made the project truly unique, however, was that the two jurisdictions elected to participate in the development of a multi-jurisdictional ordinance. The update focused only on reformatting, "clean-up" and organizational changes and an analysis of differences and similarities between City and County ordinances. Recommendations were developed for reconciling key policy differences between the two jurisdictions. The overall project began with a series of interviews and work sessions with local staff. An annotated outline was then prepared that was used as a vehicle for establishing clear expectations about what was to be accomplished in the draft code before actual drafting work began. The draft document included 18 base zoning districts that replaced the 30 districts that existed in the existing City and County codes.

Period:    July 1996 - April 1998               Contact:    Pat Lowe
Team:      Duncan Associates                                    former Assistant Planning Director
                                                                             910.341.7445