Megan Pillow | | May 2, 2008
Mooresville’s legacy in large part may be determined by a stack of binders that rest on Planning Director Tim Brown’s desk.
Those binders, said Brown, contain the codes and ordinances that will help “lead us from a town into a city.”
Mooresville, he said, has come a long way since growth first came to the once sleepy town. In the past two decades, the population has tripled — surpassing that of the county’s largest city, Statesville — and weathered the bust of the textile industry. Also, with the help of Lake Norman, corporations like Lowe’s and the growth along N.C. Highway 150, Mooresville has become a self-sustaining economy that is “very diverse,”Brown said.
“We have turned some very significant corners as a community,” he said.
Much of that progress has to do with fundamental changes the town has made to its planning policies and regulations in recent years, many of which have their roots in some of the regional changes that began a decade ago.
The focus of those policies and regulations, Brown said, is on what the planning world calls “smart growth.”
“Now, it’s certainly imbedded in the planning process of the region,” he said.
The town’s 1998 land-use plan, which Brown said attempted to anticipate future growth through a color-coded system, has been scrapped for a new, comprehensive land-use plan Brown said is much more effective.
“Colors on a map do not cut it as a planning document,” he said. “We’ve come to rely on very fine-grained small areas plans as the backbone for our policies.”
One of the first of those small area plans, which Brown said helps to regulate the growth of business, retail and residential development in targeted areas around Mooresville, is the Mount Mourne plan. That plan, said Brown, was put in place in 2000, months before Lowe’s headquarters arrived.
If it had not been there to preserve and regulate the area before the corporate giant moved in, “we would have panicked,” he said. Maintaining the area’s sense of identity was paramount.
The new land-use plan is just one of a series of tools town staff and officials are employing to direct future growth.
The town has also approved:
+ A new pedestrian plan to improve area sidewalks;
+ Land development design standards that govern everything from the materials used in development to water and sewer guidelines; and
+ A new zoning ordinance to replace the 1986 ordinance. Brown said the new ordinance is forward-thinking enough that it has become “a template for investment in our community.”
In the past year, the town has also hired its first traffic engineer and passed a comprehensive transportation plan that outlines targeted areas that need work.
Officials have begun to negotiate with the N.C. Department of Transportation for the town to pay for priority projects and be reimbursed at a later date.
Town representatives are also participating with Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville in a Traffic Task Force, which is making regional decisions on everything from the widening of Interstate 77 to the proposed light rail.
All these elements, Brown said, come together to form a picture of a town that is ready to face the future and whatever growth it might bring head-on.
“This town has so much potential,” he said. “It’s a great place today, and as we continue to grow, it’s going to be a great place.”
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