With rapid growth projected for Camden County, longtime farmer J. C. Rountree and other residents of the rural area bordering burgeoning Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, Va., wonder whether development or the “smart growth” zoning that officials have prescribed poses the greater threat to their traditional way of life.
“I know growth is coming,” Rountree said. “But I don’t want high-density development,” as proposed by county Planning Department Director Dan Porter and his staff. “I think he’s got a lot of city ideas” that won’t work in rural Camden County.
Porter has advocated that county commissioners enact “smart-growth” zoning to manage an expected surge of development in the county after a three-year building moratorium expired April 2. Recently, the commissioners had approved several restrictions — some of them the most stringent in North Carolina — before the moratorium expired.
Smart growth is an urban planning and transportation approach that advocates concentrating growth in the center of a city to avoid urban sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented land use conducive to walking and bicycling
In earlier votes, the commissioners had voted to increase residential development from one unit per one-half acre to one unit per five acres. Later they raised the regulation to 10 acres. Finally, the board reduced the requirement to one unit per five acres.
“Some of it [smart growth] I agree with. Some of it is off the wall,” said Rountree, who himself was a county commissioner for 24 years. County officials “need to look out for farmers. There needs to be a happy medium.”
Rountree expressed concern that smart growth would prevent young adults from staying in the county. “How are you going to keep home folks here? I wanted to give some land to my son. I had to burn down a barn and a house on two acres to get the land for him.” Rountree’s farm encompasses 2,000 acres.
Gauging from a discussion between county commissioners and Porter at a meeting May 7, commissioners themselves are having second thoughts about smart growth. They voted, 5-0 to invite experts from the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh and the N.C. Farm Bureau to offer alternative plans to those recommended by the Planning Department.
The county’s final stage of its land-use plan calls for centralizing development in three “core villages” in South Mills to the north, Camden in the middle, and Shiloh to the south. The high-density villages would include mixed use of commercial, residential, educational, and recreational facilities and radically transform lifestyles in the county.
Regulations inside the villages, whose boundaries are to extend one mile from a center point, would allow the building of five residential units per acre, Porter said. The units could be individual houses or clusters of condominiums and apartment. Massive tracts of open land would surround the villages, and greenways would be woven through the communities to encourage residents to walk or bicycle to their destinations instead of driving their vehicles.
“People in farming communities would like to see their farm land preserved,” Porter told CJ. “We have already had three public hearings.” About 75 residents attended the three hearings and few of them opposed the plans, Porter said.
In an interview a few days after the meeting, Commissioner Carolyn Riggs explained why she voted to seek advice from outside experts. “I’ve listened to the plan, and in a theoretical way it sounds wonderful, all the little theaters and cornfields and pea fields.”
“All I’m being told is, ‘You can’t stop growth.’ But people have a right to use their land the way they want,” she said.
“Something about this smart growth doesn’t feel right,” she said.
“I’m listening to the ‘experts’ feed me ideas about encroaching growth. This smart growth was the first I had heard,” she said. “I was opposed to it right away. Some people said, ‘You need to do something. Well, this is what we have to do.’”
During the commissioners’ meeting last week, Chairman Jeffrey Jennings told Porter he wanted to hear other opinions on how the county should grow.
“There’s a representative here from the John Locke Foundation this morning. And I’ve spoken with them half-a-dozen times…and members of the Farm Bureau,” Jennings said. “And they’re willing to bring as many people as it takes to meet with the Board of Commissioners and the Planning Board to get their views on ‘smart growth’ and how they believe that everything is not in the best interest of rural America.”
Porter told the commissioners he agrees that they should solicit different opinions and “decide how you want the county to grow. We as a staff can provide you options, that’s what you hired us for.”
But Porter complained that the commissioners haven’t been helpful. “We’ve been working on this plan for three years and we haven’t really gotten any guidance from the board. We’ve gotten it from individuals. But you, as a board, need to let us know how you want your county to grow. Let us know how you want your county developed. If you let us know how you want your county developed, we can bring you a plan forward.”
Riggs asked Porter whether the land-use plan could be rewritten to allow the building of one house per acre.
“We’re in a crunch time situation here,” Porter said. Developers have been asking the planning staff when and where they can start, but “we don’t know what to tell them.” The developers need to know something by June 4, Porter said.
“These developers, what are they asking that you can’t answer?” Riggs asked. The general guidelines have been on the books since the commissioners approved initial smart-growth zoning in past votes, she said.
Terrie Griffin, an appointed member of the county Planning Board, said that if Camden County’s old development policies continue, growth would fill out all the land within 25 years. “We still won’t have the resources to support those people,” she said. High-density development, or “clustering” of county infrastructure would be cheaper and more efficient, she said, when businesses and people come into the county. Clustering also would allow the county to generate the revenue it needed to sustain growth, she said.
“One of the things that’s frustrating us [the Planning Board] a little bit is we really don’t have a plan, or direction, on what the county wants as a whole, when we talk about growth,” Griffin said.
“I feel a little bit panicked when I start hearing about going backwards, because a lot of plans have been put in place,” she said.
Riggs told CJ that she didn’t agree with Porter’s and Griffin’s complaints. “I was concerned about 10 acres. I didn’t like the concentration being in a one-mile radius. When I heard that we [the commissioners] hadn’t given any direction, I said, ‘Golly, I should have stayed at work that day instead of going to the meeting.’”
Her biggest concern, she said, is that around Shiloh, where growth would be concentrated by the planning staff, is a “little two-lane road and when you have tractors and other farm equipment with cars on the road it’s like a raceway. I can’t see putting businesses on these little roads.”
Commissioner Mike Andrews said after the meeting that he had mixed feelings about how the county should be developed. “To me, I wouldn’t mind requiring one-acre lots, but we should give the builders options.”
As far as property owners are concerned, he said, “Everybody should be able to do what they want with their property.” But they also should also consider how their use of the property would affect their neighbors, he said.
“Some people would like to have ‘Main Street’ again. I’d like to see South Mills become like Hertford [with its downtown redevelopment]. “But I don’t want to see rubber-stamp zoning.”
“I don’t have a problem with asking developers to kick in with some improvements,” he said.
Andrews, who lives on 10 acres of land that he owns, opposes government interference with his property rights. “I’ve had the same concern [as farmers] telling me what to do with my land.” When it comes to how he votes on zoning, he said, “I don’t want to take money off anybody’s table.”
Randal O’Toole, an expert with the Thoreau Institute in Bandon, Ore., said smart-growth zoning is unnecessary and violates personal property rights. “North Carolina isn’t exactly lacking in open space,” he said. “”Ninety percent of the state’s land is rural open space.”
“You don’t need zoning to protect livability. But you do need something to protect your investment,” he said. To do that, he said, county officials should encourage developers to form homeowners’ associations that would enact covenants.
The idea that government officials have to protect open space is absurd, O’Toole said. “Planners use it to get what they want,” he said. “Planners like smart growth because cities are too complex to plan and they follow the fad.” Other fads in the past, such as urban renewal and master-plan communities, proved to be failures, he said.
“Smart growth has proven to be a huge disaster on the West Coast. Businesses have moved away, and so have people,” he said. “Smart growth has shut down growth. Portland [Ore.] and San Jose [Calif.] have vied to have the highest unemployment.”
Richard Wagner is the editor of Carolina Journal.