Pender Planning Board endorses Imagine Pender 2050 draft with two clarifying edits

Pender County Planning Board members voted unanimously to endorse the public hearing draft of the Imagine Pender 2050 comprehensive land use plan on a motion that included two memorandum items for staff to carry forward to the Board of County Commissioners.

The endorsement came after a presentation by consultants from Clarion and Milestones, who described the 20-month update process, two community engagement windows and changes made to the public hearing draft. "This is a really important, start to the public adoption process for the Imagine Pender comprehensive plan update, that we've got before you tonight," Leanne King of Clarion said as she opened the presentation.

The vote sends the plan, with the planning board's recommended edits, to the commissioners for a scheduled public hearing on Oct. 6. The board also noted that the plan will need certification from the Division of Coastal Management (DCM) before final adoption because the plan addresses coastal areas.

King said the update is intended as a 20-year policy guide, not regulatory zoning: "It is a policy document, and therefore, it is intentionally, flexible." She outlined the plan framework: three vision themes (coordinate growth/preservation/conservation and infrastructure; support Pender County's fiscal health; maintain a high quality of life), nine goals, 31 policies and 114 recommended actions. The consultants said the future land use map is the plan's guiding tool for decisions about where the county encourages growth and where conservation is preferred.

Consultants described several map changes incorporated since the public review draft, including (1) converting some rural neighborhood and rural crossroads designations near Penderly to rural agriculture at public request; (2) expanding rural neighborhood on the west side of Rocky Point to align with planned investments along the 421 corridor; (3) adding a residential neighborhood category near Industry and Commerce along 421 to reflect sewer extensions; and (4) expanding coastal neighborhood designations east of U.S. 17 to better match existing development patterns.

Board members discussed several policy topics in detail, including the plan's language about package wastewater treatment plants, parking standards for neighborhood and regional centers, and the role of Senate Bill 382 (the 2024 statute limiting local downzoning). King explained the SB 382 requirement as a statutory constraint: "This is a new, statutory requirement ... that basically limits the local government's ability to what we call down zone property." Staff said the public hearing draft includes clarifying language to help applicants choose whether to follow the prior or the new map in certain master-planned development cases to avoid unintended legal impacts.

The board asked staff to take two memorandum items to the commissioners with the endorsed plan: (1) remove the bullet that listed "establishments requiring large surface parking areas in excess of 20,000 square feet" from the discouraged uses list for the neighborhood center category; and (2) correct omitted wording in the regional center parking guidance so the standard consistently reads that surface parking "should be located to side and rear of buildings and dispersed across the development and not clustered in one large lot." Planning staff agreed to include those notes in the packet for the commissioners.

The planning board motion to endorse the plan, including the memorandum language above, passed unanimously. The planning board will present its endorsement and recommended memorandum to the Board of County Commissioners at the Oct. 6 public hearing; if the commissioners adopt the plan, it then will proceed to the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) certification process with the Division of Coastal Management.

Implementation steps identified in the plan range from ordinance updates to capital improvement planning; staff and the consultants emphasized that the plan is advisory and that zoning and development regulations (the Unified Development Ordinance) would require separate code changes to become regulatory. King told the board the plan's actions are intended to be prioritized and resourced through annual budget and CIP processes.

The planning board thanked staff and the steering committee for their work and agreed to forward the endorsed plan and memorandum to the commissioners for final consideration and DCM certification.