Huntersville planning staff present 25-year housing footprint and explain limits on moratoria

Francis, a member of Huntersville planning staff, presented a 25-year analysis of single‑family and multifamily development during a pre‑meeting discussion on the town's development pattern and possible moratoria.

The presentation mapped Huntersville’s community plans dating to 1988 and the town’s 1996 form‑based zoning code, and showed that higher‑intensity development has concentrated in an “intensity corridor” roughly one mile either side of I‑77. Francis said the town contains about 65 square miles and most recent multifamily projects are located in that core where infrastructure for shopping and travel exists.

The nut graf: the slide deck showed that while single‑family acreage and approvals still exceed multifamily, multifamily approvals and construction have increased recently, prompting council questions about whether the town can pause approvals and what legal pathways exist to do so.

Francis summarized the numeric picture: “So we've got about 11,000 units that were approved via rezoning and about 8,500 that were done by right,” he said, and added that the mapping counts roughly 11,500 acres of single‑family development and about 2,000 acres of multifamily (the presenter called the maps approximations). He also told the group the…