Pender County adopts 2050 comprehensive land-use plan after months of public outreach

The Pender County Board of Commissioners on Nov. 3 approved a new comprehensive land use plan laying out policy priorities and implementation steps to guide the county through 2050.

Staff planner Mister Brantley told the board the draft plan is the product of roughly 18–20 months of work, including two public engagement windows that produced about 1,400 survey responses and more than 300 in-person attendees across the county. "This is, effectively, a new comprehensive land use plan for Pender County," Brantley said during the presentation, describing a framework that moves from broad vision themes to goals, policies and specific actions.

The plan the board adopted includes three vision themes—coordinate growth, preserve working lands and infrastructure; support Pender County—fiscal health; and maintain a high quality of life—and nine goals (for example, sustainable and managed growth; attainable housing choices; environmental conservation and resilience). Staff said the plan contains 31 policies and roughly 114 implementation actions that planning staff will prioritize by near-, mid- and long-term timelines.

Brantley walked commissioners through several map changes made after public review: adjustments to rural neighborhood and rural crossroads designations in small centers, expansion of coastal and neighborhood-center designations in the Hampton/Hampstead areas, and identification of a growth boundary near the NC 210/421 corridor to concentrate medium-density development in the southern part of the county while retaining rural agricultural character elsewhere.

The plan is advisory rather than regulatory; staff emphasized that zoning and unified development ordinance updates will be undertaken next to align code with the plan. Brantley noted that the plan must still be certified by the state agency that oversees coastal counties: "If the board chooses to move forward this evening, we'll then be forwarding it to the Coastal Resources Commission for their final endorsement," he said.

Several residents also spoke during the public hearing portion of the meeting, raising questions about survey reach and infrastructure constraints in Scotts Hill; planning staff and commissioners said those comments informed the revisions retained in the adoption package. Commissioners adopted the plan with changes recommended by the planning board and directed staff to transmit it to the Division of Coastal Management and the Coastal Resources Commission for the final CAMA certification step.

Next steps noted by staff include updating the county's Unified Development Ordinance and prioritizing the plan's actions so the county can align capital investments and permitting recommendations with the adopted vision.

The board's vote was taken during the meeting's business session and was recorded as a motion to adopt the plan with the planning board's recommended edits; the motion passed.