A draft list of proposed recommendations for putting the brakes on booming housing sprawl in Sussex County includes rules that encourage development in areas where it has already occurred and emphasizes denser building to limit sprawl.

The 10-member land-use reform working group reviewed a draft list at its June 12 meeting. The list outlines its tentative direction.

Recommendations include:

• Explore the alignment of the future land-use map with updated state investment strategy. The state is updating its strategies for investment, which include priorities for infrastructure and services. It will take into account potential changes in Sussex County’s land-use rules
• Comprehensive rezoning
• Standards for rezoning countywide. That would create clear, objective criteria for rezoning to eliminate uncertainty and make sure approvals align with community goals, infrastructure and community character
• Define “missing middle” housing types, such as duplexes and townhomes, which are cheaper to build and purchase
• Permit missing middle housing by right
• Reduce bulk and setback standards for missing middle housing
• Increase maximum building heights
• Increase multifamily housing in strategic areas
• Modernize the CR-1, commercial residential zoning, to support mixed-use residential corridors. Vince Robertson, a county attorney, said the CR-1 category had been closed some years ago because of its limitations and new districts were created
• Establish a process for phasing coordination of transportation improvements.

The list was released during a meeting focusing on farmland and other open spaces, areas where much of the growth has occurred. The development has overburdened roads, schools, emergency services, healthcare providers and the environment.

A consultant hired by the county plans to have discussions with individual working group members between June 24 and July 2, as the process moves toward a final list of recommendations. That information will be shared with the group.

The last working group meetings are scheduled for July 10 and 24, and Aug. 5 and 21.

The working group members represent developers, environmentalists, farmers, engineers, affordable housing advocates and state agencies.

“Everyone, by virtue of being here, has a slightly different perspective,” said Andrew Bing of Kramer & Associates, the consultant hired to coordinate the process.

The group is trying to determine what kinds of development to encourage and generally where it should be located. Members also want to steer development away from farmland, forested areas and environmentally sensitive areas. 

Since the county’s laws were created in the 1970s, AR-1, agricultural-residential zones, have existed across the county. That has encouraged construction of single-family homes, driving up prices and limiting the type of housing available.

During the continuing housing boom, developers found it easiest to build the two houses per acre allowed by the county.

“It’s all the same,” said David Edgell, director of the Office of State Planning Coordination. “It doesn’t matter if you’re inside or outside [a growth zone], and that’s sort of the crux of the issue and why we’re here. So if there were more predictability and some incentives to develop in the growth zones and not develop elsewhere, that would be a step forward.”

“The density has been the issue,” said Mike Riemann, a representative of the American Council of Engineering Companies and president of the Home Builders Association of Delaware. “The reason we’re getting the sprawl is, frankly, the current density allowances that we have are really creating that scenario.”

Draft recommendations call for denser development, expedited approvals, relaxed lot sizes and other rules in exchange for land preservation.

While some working group members continue to ask to draw proposed areas where growth would be focused under the new rules, Bing said that is not in the plans.

Robertson noted maps will be created during the county comprehensive map update due in 2028, and there could be a conflict with the working group’s recommendations.

Jill Hicks, president of the Sussex Preservation Coalition, and Jon Horner, a representative of the Home Builders Association of Delaware and general counsel for Schell Brothers and Ocean Atlantic Companies, both said more must be done to limit sprawl.

“We have to figure out a way to incentivize growth in the areas where we want it, to potentially disincentivize growth in the areas we don’t want it, and then to figure out a way to compensate the people that are in those areas where we don’t want growth for that potential deprivation of land value,” Horner said. “It’s not an easy thing.”