Wilmington City Council votes to approve new development standards for the City's waterfront zoning districts.
The ordinance changes various restrictions for Waterfront Low-Intensity Manufacturing and Commercial Recreation Zoning Districts, or W3.
The Wilmington Land Use and Planning Department's Planning Manager Gwinneth Kaminsky says current standards are too restrictive and have not encouraged development on the eastern end of the City's Seventh Street Peninsula without relief from the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
The new restrictions move the height allowed from 35 to 72 feet, or six stories, the floor area ratio going up from 0.25 to 2, and a building coverage ratio up from 0.25 to 0.6, which previously allowed only one-quarter of the development site to be built on.
Kaminsky told council Thursday the changes will make the area more developer-friendly.
“These changes to the W3 restrictions make the district more competitive and will lessen the need to seek ZBA relief to be able to build on a property," Kaminsky says.
Council also passed an ordinance rezoning one of three parcels owned by B&M Meats to make them all W3, saving B&M from having to rezone to W2, allowing for much more intensive development and changing the area’s character.
“The planning division proposed an alternative zoning scenario in which the two W3 parcels would be retained, and the W4 parcel to W3," Kaminsky says. "The entire development site would now be able to be developed under W3, since the proposed processing facility is permitted in W3, and this would also preserve the character of the eastern end of the peninsula.”
Kaminsky says the company’s plans for a processing plant would have required a more intensive W2 zoning if the W3 requirements were not changed.
