GEORGETOWN – Capacity versus sustainable growth may be the topic of the year in Sussex County as the Land Use Reform Working Group starts its discussions.
As Sussex County continues to see more homes being built on farmland, officials have been wrestling with the best way to manage the explosive growth, even considering a building moratorium earlier this year. Instead, the Sussex County Council organized a working group to discuss smarter and sustainable development, affordable and workforce housing needs, farmland and natural resources preservation, and the prevention of an uncoordinated low-density sprawl.
Senior Vice President of Kramer & Associates Andrew Bing told the group of stakeholders Thursday that the goals presented offer a guided path forward, highlighting the importance discussions will have as they work together to craft what could be Sussex County’s next move when it comes to land use and future construction in light of the county’s failed moratorium.
“We’ve been given an aggressive charge to come up with something we can present to the council, somethings that are specific and hopefully can move this county forward,” Bing said.
Bing also mentioned that each member of the working group was interviewed individually prior to the group meetings to better identify their perspectives. From those discussions, seven themes were identified related to Sussex County, he added. These themes included:
- A risk of growth outpacing infrastructure
- Inflexible housing supply which is currently favors single-family detached homes with a limited amount of duplexes, townhomes, multifamily homes and mixed-use buildings, for example
- Environmental resources which are currently under pressure
- An unpredictable development process
- Tension relating to farmland and natural resources preservation and property rights
- Support for higher-density areas in the right places
- A desire for clearer growth areas
Sussex County farmer and working group member Jay Baxter said the conversations are critical as the county continues to grow.
“It seems like we’re maybe headed in the right direction here because we’re taking each one of these themes and picking them apart,” Baxter told the group.
He has watched Sussex County grow by leaps and bounds since he was a youth, but he told fellow members of the new group that more conversations on how that growth happens in the future will be critical.
As the only farmer on the group, he brings a unique agricultural spin to the conversations as leaders work to dive deeper into Sussex County land following heated debates about the now failed moratorium on future construction.
“All of these things are subjective to everyone’s opinion, right? Zoar Road [in Georgetown] used to be a place that I could ride my bicycle to work at 13-years-old. There’s no way in the world. . . I feel stressed out sending my 17-year-old down that road and he’s in a 500-horsepower tractor that’s 18-feet wide and he’s invincible, but he’s now a liability,” he said.
But safety isn’t the only question at hand when it comes to future growth in Sussex County.
Others, like Delaware State Housing Authority Chief Strategy Advisor Caitlin Del Collo, mentioned affordable and workforce housing needs, among the list of concerns.
“I 1,000% agree [housing supply] is inflexible and limited. . . I took a look at the summary of residential zoning districts and the county code and everything that is not a single-family detached house is lumped in under the definition of multi-family. So, townhouses, apartments, duplexes,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit here. Just changing the definition of duplexes and townhomes and making them permitted uses where you’re allowing single-family detached will go a long way to create predictability for developers. If you also match that with increasing allowable density, that’s where we start to get where housing can be affordable even without public subsidy.”
After a period of discussion, working group members assigned the themes important to them to the goals laid out by the Sussex County Council to further direct future conversations.
The meeting was just the second of several in the works focused on growth in Delaware’s fastest-growing county and Bing emphasized that no formal recommendations were to be made by the group yet.
The next public meeting for Sussex County’s Land Use Reform Working Group will be Thursday, May 1 at 10 a.m.
