Huntersville rejects national home builder’s plan for Lake Norman-area homes
The Huntersville Board of Commissioners Tuesday night rejected a national homebuilder’s plan for homes, pickleball courts and a public park with a fishing pond east of Interstate 77.
The board voted against a rezoning for the 259-home community proposed by NVR Inc., the parent company of Ryan Homes.
The developer would have donated land for the town park and 10-acre public fishing pond and built 2.3 miles of multi-use paths.
In making the motion to deny the rezoning, commissioner Jennifer Hunt said the project didn’t align with the town’s land-use plan for the area.
“It’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole,’’ commissioner Nick Walsh said.
Pickleball courts, dog park and splash pad
Nine open spaces totaling 23 acres would have included the pickleball courts, a recreational field, butterfly gardens, fire pit, dog park, a half-basketball court, a shade structure, splash pad and a playground with swings, Sean Paone, principal of project consultant Bolton & Menk, told the Huntersville Planning Board on May 27. The Planning Board voted 4-2 to recommend the rezoning to the Town Board. Three members abstained.
Natural wildlife corridors would have cut through the 106 acres east of the intersection of Hambright Road and Everette Keith Road.
NVR proposed a mix of housing types: 76 townhomes north of Hambright Road; 75 cottage homes south of Hambright; 99 homes near the southern and eastern parts of the property; and nine larger home lots beside Dogwood Lane, according to NVR’s rezoning application .
The development would have included eight for-sale, attainable housing units, or those affordable to teachers, police and firefighters.
NVR also would have extended Hambright Road, its application showed.
“We like to create great communities,” Scott Munday, Charlotte-based general manager of land for NVR/Ryan Homes told the Planning Board. “We believe this community fits that bill exactly.
“It’s highly amenitized, it’s highly planned, and we think it would be very attractive to owners,” Munday said. “And we believe it has a lot of benefits to the town as well.”
NVR/Ryan Homes has developed 15 to 20 communities in the Charlotte metro area over the past five years totaling 5,000 lots, and “each are to this level of detail and plan,” Munday said, referring to Everette Keith Residential.
Planning Board members who voted to recommend the rezoning said they liked the amenities and said the development appeared to be a good fit with its surroundings.
Board members against the rezoning sided with town planning staff concerned that the number of homes conflicted with zoning plans for the area.
“Lack of connectivity”
The size of NVR’s planned development was not why the Town Board rejected the project, Jeff Locke, chair of Huntersville’s Greenway, Trail, and Bikeway Commission, told The Charlotte Observer.
The citizen advocacy committee works with the Board of Commissioners and town planning and parks and rec staff to prioritize and direct bicycle and pedestrian initiatives.
“The town generally is actually in favor of density,” Locke said in an email. “It has to do with issues about planning layout, the lack of connectivity, and many of the changes meant to bring the plan into compliance being last minute after two years of back and forth.
“Jennifer Hunt gave a very long list of reasons to deny the petition,” Locke said. “Nick Walsh, a former member of the GTBC, cited connectivity specifically.”
The GBTC conditionally approved the plan, Locke said. The developer just had to agree “to provide shovel-ready engineering for a bridge to better connect not only their own community, but as part of ‘The Seam,’” the regional connector formerly called the Charlotte to Mooresville Trail, he said.
“Huntersville is absolutely not opposed to development,” Locke said. “It just has to fit our plan, and meet our standards. The developer didn’t do that.”
Correction: This story was updated on June 25, 2025. A previous version of this story contained an incorrect vote tally.
This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.