Saving Sledge Forest

by Dave Rollo

Like many coastal communities, the county of New Hanover, North Carolina, is rich in habitat diversity. Its coastal plain is dominated by estuaries, marshes, and swamp forests and is considered a global biodiversity hotspot. The county is home to a number of threatened and endangered species, with mounting human pressures of a growing population and economy.

The county’s growth has accelerated over the past twenty years. The population has grown 50 percent, from 160,000 to nearly 240,000. Most of this population growth has occurred in greater Wilmington, spreading north into the county’s rural areas. Population increases have gone hand-in-hand with expansion of the built environment. As a result, the county has lost some 70 percent of its historic vegetation.

Rather than resist growth pressures, local elected officials have generally acquiesced and in some cases expedited growth. New Haven’s latest county comprehensive plan, finalized in 2016, designates areas for increasingly intensive land uses. Permitted uses include commercial, employment, mixed-use (commercial/retail and housing), and various densities of housing.

New Hanover County lies within the North Carolina Coastal Plain. (Modified from NCpedia).

These uses are encroaching on the last remaining agricultural and undeveloped natural areas in the north of the county. Areas designated for conservation in the comprehensive plan include the extensive coastline that runs along the county’s entire eastern border, the estuary where the Cape Fear River meets the Atlantic Ocean, and wetlands adjacent to the Cape Fear River along the county’s western border.

The county government failed to designate some key natural areas for conservation. A prime example is the Northeast Cape Fear River Floodplain on New Hanover County’s northwest border.  Designated a Significant Natural Heritage Area (SNHA), it contains some 22,000 acres of rare southern swampland. This includes some of “the best examples of Tidal Cypress-Gum swamp community,” according to one natural inventory. Urban development is now encroaching on this rare ecosystem, as county planning has failed to hit the brakes on sprawl. A 4,030-acre tract within the SNHA, Sledge Forest, has galvanized residents to contest permissive county zoning policies. Residents have awoken to the costs—ecological and monetary—that these policies entail.

Comprehensive Plan Contradictions

The text of the 2016 New Hanover County Comprehensive Plan repeatedly calls for the preservation of agricultural and ecologically sensitive land. However, its land-use density maps do not follow this directive. Castle Hayne, an area in the northern region of the county, is now destined for development instead of conservation. This area includes Sledge Forest and the county’s largest expanse of undeveloped farmland.

New Hanover County land use map (left), with Sledge Forest outlined in red (Plan NHC: Charting the Course). Population density map (right) with Castle Hayne outlined (University of North Carolina, Affordable and Workforce Housing Report).

County government is exacerbating the threat to Castle Hayne by permitting a higher land-use density in its eastern area than code currently allows. They are effecting this change by transferring the entirety of Sledge Forest’s 4,030 permitted units (one unit per acre x 4,030 acres) to the nominally buildable 1,000 acres of eastern Castle Hayne. This allows for a four-fold increase in the area’s land use density.

The tract slated for development in eastern Castle Hayne used to lie outside the boundary for urban Services, which include sewage and water utilities. However, the 2016 Comprehensive Plan eliminated the Urban Services Boundary entirely. Ostensibly, extending urban sewage services protected wetlands and aquifers from leaky septic tanks. However, the increased development that the boundary elimination encourages outweighs the conservation benefits of fewer septic tanks.

Indeed, county government has shown an increasingly favorable posture toward land development in eastern Castle Hayne. Other than Special Flood Hazard Areas, which are designated off-limits for development, little land in eastern Castle Hayne is explicitly designated for nature or farmland conservation.

Costs of Growth

New Hanover’s Urban Services Boundary (Planning NHC, Charting the Course). The area in pink is the proposed Hilton Bluffs development within Sledge Forest.

As New Hanover County grows, costs of infrastructure and services increase. New Hanover is in the top ten counties in North Carolina for tax burden. For 2025, residents face further increases in operating expenses.

The county’s home property values have also increased 67 percent for residents, and with a tax rate of 45 cents per $100 of value, tax burdens will likely increase dramatically. New Hanover has a growing number of cost-burdened residents—over 32,000 households (34% of residents) in 2023—and higher taxes will add to their financial distress.

The costs of growth—be they services, such as public safety, sanitation, and public transportation, or capital projects, such as road expansion, water treatment plant additions, schools, sidewalks, or stormwater mitigation—are rarely included in total costs to the developer. New Hanover County must meet significant capital costs to cope with its planned expansion. Critics of growth like urban planner Eben Fodor say these costs are passed on to current residents in the form of higher taxes and fees.

Sledge Forest’s Fate Hangs in the Balance

Nowhere has the encroaching sprawl of urbanization been so controversial as in Sledge Forest, where a developer has put forth the Hilton Bluffs proposal to develop the forest’s 4,000 acres. Sledge Forest is located squarely within the Northeast Cape Fear River Floodplain. It makes up about 20 percent of this fragile ecosystem. The forest, as described by ecologist Andy Wood, consists of some twenty ecotones that grade from the river floodplain to higher elevations. It was logged in the early-to-mid 1700s and intermittently ever since. Yet Sledge Forest still contains an exemplary coastal longleaf pine woodland with many rare understory species. A few ancient trees remain, including 350-year-old pines and 500-year-old cypresses.

Local activists petition their county representatives at the New Hanover County Courthouse (Save Sledge Forest).

The Hilton Bluffs proposal would seem impractical, as floodplain constrains development of three-quarters of Sledge Forest’s 4,000 acres. Indeed, just 1,000 acres of the total would typically be considered developable at one unit per acre under the residential agricultural designation. However, county government has granted the special zoning status of “performance subdivision.” This allows the entire area to receive the zoning designation of the buildable portion. This has given the developer of Hilton Bluffs latitude to develop at a density comparable to that found within the Wilmington municipal boundary, five miles away.

Assuming 2.5 residents per dwelling on average, the 4,030 units proposed would house over 10,000 people. Yet the area is currently without adequate infrastructure, including roads. At over 6,400 residents per square mile, Hilton Bluffs would exceed the density of many areas in urban Wilmington. Yet Bill Jayne, former chair of the Wilmington Tree Commission, says, “the swampland of Sledge Forest should have never been zoned residential agricultural—it was never practical to put even one home there.” Many Castle Hayne residents share this view and have come together to support Save Sledge Forest.

Burgeoning Opposition to Hilton Bluffs

Kayne Darrell, who founded Save Sledge Forest in 2024, describes the performance subdivision zoning as entirely inappropriate. “The developers are using jurisdictional wetlands in their density calculations—this is being permitted by the County, but is not in the spirit of the code.”

Packed meetings as local citizens express concerns for the fate of Sledge Forest (Save Sledge Forest).

The degree of opposition to the Hilton Bluffs proposal seems to have blindsided both the developer—based 200 miles away in Charlotte—and the county commissioners. When reserving a room for a February 11, 2025, public meeting, the developer was cautioned to find a bigger space. He reserved a larger venue, with capacity for 296 people, but it was still inadequate. “There were 200 people who couldn’t enter the room,” according to Darrell: “a huge crowd with only six days’ notice.” Public comment included many topics of concern. Residents were alarmed that such density had arrived on their doorstep, threatening their rural way of life and the local environment.

Save Sledge Forest aims to partner with another local environmental group for fiscal sponsorship. Then, they plan to hire an attorney to challenge the density calculation. Indeed, the New Hanover County land use code describes exclusions in density calculations for marshland. The determination is based, in part, on soil testing. The exclusion of the 3,000 acres from those calculations would limit the developer to 1,000 homes on 1,000 acres. This would greatly impact his profit margin.

At a mid-December meeting, County Commissioner Rob Zapple asked that the county’s planning administrator research whether the permit conforms with the county’s land use code. Factors for the administrator to consider include onsite biodiversity and soil composition and impact on rural roads. (The development is estimated to lead to over 30,000 additional car trips per day.) Such factors could impact density calculations and, in turn, developer permissions.

Zapple’s colleague, Commissioner Dane Scalise, assured the public that “no approvals have been made” and warned against “foregone conclusions.” He said the commissioners “want the public to know that they have been heard and we are going to look into this matter to find out what, if anything, is available to be done to make sure that we’re doing the right things, complying with the law here in New Hanover County.”

Restoring Local Land-Use Control

The magnitude of public outcry over Hilton Bluffs indicates it is a line in the sand for New Hanover County residents. The fight to save Sledge Forest will be a litmus test for local activists’ ability to prevent development of the county’s last remaining forests and farms.

Coastal Carolina wetland forests have dwindled as coastal development has increased in recent decades (NPGallery, Wikimedia Commons).

In the coming years, public comment for the county’s comprehensive plan update, dubbed “Destination 2050,” will test its trend of expediting development. Costs of growth are clearly in the public consciousness. The fight for protection of undeveloped land will extend beyond Sledge Forest. A reevaluation of growth accommodation in the 2016 plan should direct renewed focus on conservation and tougher codes.

A bill recently passed at the state level prohibits local government from down-zoning (decreasing density). This makes it even more difficult to resist or reverse development. Save Sledge Forest is urging its members to ask their representatives to support NC House Bill 24 to “Restore Down-Zoning Authority.” As stated in the organization’s urgent action notice:

“This bill is vital for local control over development, environmental protection, and community well-being. It could potentially impact the outcome of Sledge Forest by restoring the necessary authority to local governments, enabling leaders to balance development with conservation, ensuring that economic growth does not come at the cost of our environment.”

As is increasingly evident, economic growth does come at the cost of our environment. Too often, we equate growth with vitality and thus assume it necessary for human well-being. But we cannot sustain growth indefinitely. We must find an equilibrium—a steady state economy—that doesn’t sacrifice our life-support systems.

New Hanover County has a chance to find that equilibrium and keep the county great, starting with the saving of Sledge Forest.

Dave Rollo is a policy specialist and team leader of the Keep Our Counties Great campaign at CASSE.