Mooresville says it’s not against growth. But the town keeps rejecting new development

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The Mooresville board drew applause from concerned residents in rejecting some major development proposals this year.

Commissioners unanimously voted down annexing and providing utilities to Alabama-based LIV Development’s proposed 96.8-acre Lake Davidson mega-community, off Transco Road. That’s off I-77 Langtree Road Exit 31.

In reaction, the developer sued the town in hopes of building its 353 multifamily units, 136 town homes, 90 duplexes, waterfront restaurant and public shoreline greenway, the Observer previously reported.

Commissioners cited concerns over fire response and spilling more traffic onto already-clogged Mooresville roads. The proposal faced broad opposition from people living at Lake Davidson.

LIV Development’s planned community is among a list of proposed projects that Mooresville’s leaders are saying no to. But officials say they can’t blame developers for trying, acknowledging the town and Lake Norman are just too irresistible to pass on.

Anyone driving up Interstate 77 who “saw that beautiful look down the water and thought, ‘What a beautiful place,’ how do you fault them for that?” Mooresville Mayor Chris Carney told The Charlotte Observer.

Still, the refusals continue.

Denied development and upcoming votes

In a split vote in April, the board denied a South Carolina developer’s plans to revitalize one of Lake Norman’s landmark waterfront sites, the shuttered Queens Landing entertainment complex on N.C. 150.

Decorative items lay toppled on the miniature golf course at the closed Queens Landing entertainment complex on Lake Norman in Mooresville on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Gone are the Catawba Queen and Lady of the Lake dinner cruise boats.
Decorative items lay toppled on the miniature golf course at the closed Queens Landing entertainment complex on Lake Norman in Mooresville on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Gone are the Catawba Queen and Lady of the Lake dinner cruise boats.

Commissioners said the project was too immense for an area where only one or two homes per acre are called for under the town’s land-use plan, and no affordable-housing units were proposed.

Residents also cited the already intolerable traffic along N.C. 150, where Queens Landing opened in the early 1990s.

And a vote looms for commissioners in November or December on another major mixed-use community: Charlotte developer Pappas Properties’ 625-home Mooresville Village, where the town is building its four-lane East West Connector highway near Lake Norman.

On Sept. 24, the Mooresville Planning Board voted 6-2 to recommend that commissioners approve a rezoning for the project. The town’s One Mooresville land-use plan targets that area of the lake as an employment center with mixed uses.

Mooresville Village would be located at the intersection of the East West Connector and N.C. 115 and also would include a grocery store, bank, shops, offices, hotel, trails, open space and a multi-use path.

No more apartments!

Mayor Chris Carney said “it’s incumbent on” himself and town commissioners to protect what makes Mooresville special as people continue to move there.

“We made a big adjustment in the way we do apartments,” he said. “Now they have to be a part of an overall mixed-use project. We no longer allow them without a massive commercial component to them.”

“So you’re seeing two or three houses per acre, as opposed to five or six,” Carney said. “Yes, people are still coming. But we’re not going to allow parts of our town to be incredibly dense.”

The town is considering steering projects with more homes nearer to I-77, and “less dense” developments “elsewhere,” he said.

The bottom line: “We don’t do apartments anymore,” Carney said. “We are not in the apartment business.”

The town is in the middle of its Mooresville Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan, which is expected to be complete in January, town commissioner Lisa Qualls said. “That will further define what we want to see,” she said.

Looking at growth differently

Mooresville’s new development measures and votes to reject some projects prompted the Observer to ask Carney if Mooresville was anti-growth.

“No,” he said. “Not at all. We just decided to look at growth in a different way. We’re always going to go after jobs. We’re an employment community, for sure. The (lake) communities to our south (Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville) all drive into Charlotte to work every day. And that’s not the business model we operate off of.

“But also, instead of the ‘pack-’em-and-stack-’em’ apartment complexes, we’re moving more into the town homes, and trying to lower density that way,” he said. “And it’s made a big difference.“

‘What a beautiful place’

Carney suggests growth isn’t all that bad.

“I never even apologize for the growth,” Carney, 53, said. “They chose this area for the same reason we chose, because it is a really great place. And we just don’t shut the door on people. That’s not how we do things.”

Carney and his wife, Francie, thought the same as other newcomers after they married in 1996, lived briefly in Charlotte and considered moving to Denver in eastern Lincoln County or Mooresville to start their family. They still live in the home they bought in Mooresville in 1997.

“If you look countrywide, North Carolina, just in general, we’re a fairly normal state,” Carney, a Republican, former state senator and Mooresville town commissioner said. “We’re not too far this way or that way. So people who come don’t have to feel like ... We’re not California and that craziness, San Francisco.

“And most people appreciate the fact that you can walk down Main Street and people say hi to you. You can go to the grocery store and make a friend, right? It’s a very cool place.

“You take that, and then be able to drive a short time to go watch a Panthers’ game, or (a performance at) the Blumenthal,” he said. “Or you can hit the mountains in just an hour-and-a-half or the beach in just a few hours.”

“My kids have said it best: Growing up here, you don’t realize how much of an anomaly you grew up in until you travel and realize there’s not many places like it. They tell their friends all of the time: I couldn’t have imagined growing up and having a better childhood, and they’re very thankful for it.”

‘Small-town feel’

Qualls, the town commissioner, is a mortgage loan officer who asks every client what lured them from California and other states. She also chairs the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, which recommends Charlotte-area transportation projects to the N.C. Department of Transportation.

New Mooresville home buyers tell Qualls that “they searched Google for a place at a lake that’s 30 minutes to an international airport, and within a respectable drive to mountains and beaches,” she said. “And up popped ‘Mooresville, North Carolina.’”

Qualls moved from Ohio in 1999 “obviously for the weather, much like everybody else,” she said.

“I feel like we live in paradise, halfway to the beach, halfway to the mountains. And we’ve got gorgeous Lake Norman. The quality of life. I believe that’s why everybody else moved here, too.

“And our community still has a small-town feel,” she said.

On Sunday, Sept. 8, “we had a great fundraiser with 300 cyclists from all across the state,” Qualls said. “Within minutes, they could ride and see cornfields, a gorgeous bike ride on a Sunday morning.”

The Mooresville Fondo on Sept. 8, 2024, raised tens of thousands of dollars for suicide prevention efforts and various local charities.
The Mooresville Fondo on Sept. 8, 2024, raised tens of thousands of dollars for suicide prevention efforts and various local charities.