Why Should Delaware Care?
Sussex County has experienced a building boom in the last decade, which has added more than 30,000 residents and put unexpected strains on affordability, roads, services and the environment. A new group aims to propose ways to reform county codes to ease that strain.
Just weeks after a new county councilman proposed a yearlong building moratorium, Sussex County’s new Land Use Reform Working Group met to open a dialogue about how to best guide future development in the county.
The 10-member appointed working group, which includes a developer, preservationist, farmer, planner, environmentalist and more, was a compromise to head off the attempt by Councilman Matt Lloyd to put a pause on building.
They met for the first time March 25 and quickly coalesced around at least one central issue: the county’s planning and zoning codes are geared toward large-tract, single-family home development rather than mixed use, multi-family housing.
That’s led to a population explosion of more than 30,000 new arrivals to Sussex County in the last decade, who are eager to buy newly built homes in large subdivisions near the Delaware beaches.
“People want to be in Sussex County. It’s a great place to live. Our population is not growing by birth, but by inbound migration,” said David Edgell, the director of the Office of State Planning Coordination (OSPC). “They are coming from eastern states like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.”
“The challenge here is real and there is a lot of pressure on us,” he said at the first meeting in Georgetown. “I am glad we are here talking.”
The land use reform group will come up with initial recommendations and areas of focus within 60 days, but will remain convened for up to one year. It will send recommended land use reforms to the county council.
4 key themes for group
The group first reviewed the current state of affairs.
Of 151,000 acres of land in Sussex County, about 72,000 is considered “developable land” and of that about 55,767 acres are zoned for residential development.
The county’s density ratios range from seven units to just two units per acre, which results in different kinds of housing stock.
“Each approach comes with a trade-off; what works well in one part of the county may create challenges elsewhere,” said Andrew Bing, senior vice president of Maryland-based consultancy Kramer & Associates that facilitated the meeting. “Policy choices we make are often experienced differently across communities, neighborhoods and population.”
Jon Horner, of the Home Builders Association of Delaware, agreed, saying, “Growth is happening everywhere so it’s hard to deal with it by region or county-zoned space.”
The working group will draft recommendations in the second quarter and finalize them in the third quarter of the year. It will particularly focus on four themes:
1. Implement smarter and sustainable development
2. Ensure growth is supported by infrastructure
3. Address workforce training and development
4. Protect farming and Ag interests in the region
Sussex County Administrator Todd Lawson said the group “doesn’t really have any guardrails” on its discussion, but added that he hoped they could develop ideas that “create incentives for residential land use development.”
“All ideas are worth exploring and talking about. We will make our recommendations to the county council and the final decision rests with them,” he said, noting how the recommendations will be conveyed to the public – including whether dissenting opinions from the majority would be relayed –will be determined later.
Michael Riemann, a civil engineer with Becker Morgan Group that works with local developers and representing the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), described the elephant in the room — county zoning rules favor big subdivisions.
“We need clarity around the zoning process,” he said. “That is extremely important to make it clear to our landowners. Let’s create clarity about what we can and cannot do in this process.”
Does the market want housing diversity?
Jill Hicks, president of the Sussex Preservation Coalition, a grassroots organization interested in smart development, noted that better coordination is need to ensure the growth in Sussex County is properly managed.
She particularly noted that means reassessing the constant development of land where state officials have not planned growth, known as Level 4 lands.
“We have removed a lot of acreage of wetlands and forest. The developed areas we have developed, where the state has asked us not to, represents 24% of state-invested area. There is no budget for infrastructure to support it,” she said. “We are building at a rapid pace we cannot manage and we are building in the wrong places.”
Riemann agreed with Hicks, but added that “we are not building in the right place because the process does not encourage us to do so.”
He noted that agricultural residential (AR-1) zoning allows easier development of single-family lots at a two per acre density. Because the projects are farther from neighboring communities and don’t require tapping into shared utilities, it makes permitting easier as a by-right project.
“Development sprawls out because it is easier. Higher density, mixed-use development requires more hoops,” he admitted.
Riemann, whose company is working on the controversial mixed-use BelMead project near Lewes, also faulted the state’s planning coordination. While the state’s and county’s comprehensive plans don’t match, he also noted that road and highway upgrades near Level 4 area only serve to entice more development to those areas.
“We need to take a hard look at what is permitted. We have single-family (homes) everywhere. What about multi-family, condo or more affordable housing?” he asked.
Jay Baxter, a multi-generational owner of Baxter Farms in Georgetown, noted that more needed to be understood about whether the county’s new arrivals were driving the type of housing stock available or whether the market was dictating what was available to them.
“We all know they want to live near the beach. But would they rather live in a high-rise condo or do they all have to settle for a $500,000 single-family home?” he asked.
Hicks agreed and said a market study may be insightful for where and what the county should be building. That could help the county protect environmentally sensitive areas that have increasingly come under threat as development sprawls and infills the few remaining green pockets in eastern Sussex, she added.