As thousands flock to Lake Norman’s ‘paradise,’ traffic and growth spark concerns

October 9

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After decades of rapid population growth — 8,600 to nearly 55,000 since 1980 — Mooresville is saying “enough” to developers and their proposals for the Lake Norman town.

Located 27 miles north of Charlotte in Iredell County, Mooresville officials rejected at least a half-dozen large multifamily developments proposed over the past two years. Approving them would have dumped thousands more cars onto already jammed roads.

Mooresville, like other communities in the Lake Norman region, has been a magnet for development for the past four decades, longtime residents say. Not only retirees, but major companies and their employees from higher-cost states continue to gravitate to the lake.

Many are drawn to Lake Norman communities because of their small town charm, plus convenience to recreation, the airport and the big city, Charlotte. But officials say rapid development places a burden on county roads and government’s ability to provide police and fire protection, schools and other essential services.

Mooresville appears to lead the pack as being ideal to many, judging by a recent nod from a personal-finance site dubbing it the fastest growing suburb in America.

That may not be the best news for a town that balked this summer at being the last stop on Charlotte’s commuter rail Red Line originating from uptown.

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Main Street in downtown Mooresville is seeing more traffic as more housing development continues in the city itself, as well as surrounding areas. The town has been hit the hardest among other Lake Norman communities with exploding development and rapid growth that residents don’t want. Town officials are trying their best to control growth, but they keep coming.

“Not only are you asking us to bring denser development, but also the traffic to get to that station,” Mooresville Mayor Chris Carney said about the third iteration of the Red Line over the decades. “You’re looking at doing all of the things we’re trying to hold back on — more cars on the road, denser development. And rail is absolutely one of those things that brings that.”

Huntersville Mayor Christy Clark attributed her town’s recent growth to the quality of public schools in the area.

“I think that’s attractive to young families when they’re thinking about where to settle and raise kids,” Clark said. “They want to be in a place where public schools are known for their quality.”

But Huntersville sticks close to its 2040 Community Plan and hasn’t approved many new developments, Clark added.

In Lincoln County, officials passed an amendment to its Unified Development Ordinance to control growth and how many single-family homes are allowed, but that came only after other projects were already approved.

Many residents have started petition drives demanding an end to more developments in and near their lakeside communities. While they too were drawn to Mooresville and also have contributed to the growth, the increased traffic is becoming overwhelming, they say.

Even one-way trips to grocery stores nearly an hour long, towns are getting pickier about the types of developments allowed.

“We are not anti-growth,” Mooresville commissioner and Ohio native Lisa Qualls said.

She considers Mooresville and the lake “paradise” and says growth can be good if it brings jobs, retail shops, medical and other services and a mix of housing types, rather than just high-rise apartments that only further clog roads.

“We can now say what type of growth we welcome and want,” she said.

Major roads are being built and expanded to alleviate congestion. And a new town zoning rule mandates a quarter of any new development must be mixed-use with commercial-retail components.

But the main strategy Mooresville officials use to control what is coming in is to just say no.

Still, concerned resident Jack Benyon asks, about the various strategies to control or slow development, is it all “a little too late?”

We left New Jersey to avoid this, resident says

Main roads in Mooresville have become so bottlenecked that even folks here less than five years have launched petition drives, urging the town to curb what they call unbridled growth destroying their peaceful lake-area living.

“This is a beautiful place,” financial wealth advisor Laura Grasso said. Her family left New Jersey for the Brawley School Road peninsula in 2021.

She started her Stop Brawley Overdevelopment petition in September 2023 because “I love Mooresville,” Grasso said.

Fellow “Jersey-ite” Benyon, who moved to the peninsula in 1999, and other residents helped lead the drive. At least 557 people signed the petition in a week-and-a-half, he said.

“I was really concerned — there were many people concerned — about all of the building going on without thought of” the need for more roads, police officers, fire stations and schools, Grasso said.

Residents petitioned the Mooresville Board of Commissioners to enact a short-term building moratorium until major road projects are complete, including the state’s expansion of N.C. 150 at the lake.

The petition asks the town to provide more public parks, green space, and local school boards to build more schools.

And the petition calls on the state to “change and strengthen laws” allowing municipalities to collect impact fees and require developers to help build schools, roads and fire, EMT and police stations needed because of the new homes.

From ‘really, really special’ to traffic nightmare

As traffic worsens, it will be tougher to evacuate after an incident at McGuire Nuclear Station, Grasso said. The Duke Energy power plant operates on the southern end of the lake, off N.C. 73 in Huntersville.

“I don’t want this to turn into the traffic of New Jersey, or D.C., or some really crowded place, because I feel like Mooresville is really, really special,” Grasso said.

The town should provide more paths for scooter riders and bicyclists, she added.

“Have a little trolley system to (Mooresville’s) downtown,” she said. “If we had more paths going to different parts of Mooresville, maybe people wouldn’t have to drive as much.”

For decades, the worst congestion in Mooresville has been along N.C. 150 at Interstate 77 exit 36.

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A steady flow of traffic proceeds through an intersection on N.C. 150 west of Mooresville, NC, on Wednesday, November 17, 2021.

Back in 1973, traffic was light along the two-lane, former farm-to-market route. That’s when Sam “Rawhide” Newman and his family perched their 24-foot camper at the old Al’s Campground near the N.C. 150 bridge. The span bisecting the lake is on the Iredell-Catawba county line.

The Newmans loved to drive from their home in Kernersville in Forsyth County to fish and vacation on Lake Norman, and later bought a forever home.

A now-retired pest control company owner, Newman also became a champion Lake Norman angler. He taught the late NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt how to catch the biggest of fish on the lake, framed photos in Newman’s home office show.

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In this 2012 Charlotte Observer file photo, veteran Lake Norman fisherman Sam “Rawhide” Newman of Mooresville holds a 9-pound striper he caught on the lake. Newman recalls “breezing down” N.C. 150 in Mooresville to the lake in the 1970s at 55 or 60 mph. Traffic “was light,” and no businesses existed at I-77 exit 36, he said.

In 1973, “there was nothing on the left or right” of N.C. 150 from exit 36 to Big Daddy’s seafood restaurant and oyster bar three miles west on the lake, Newman said.

Scores of businesses now pack the corridor, including in retail centers anchored by Best Buy, Super Target and Super Walmart.

“We would breeze down that highway at 55 or 60 miles per hour,” the 86-year-old Newman said. The speed limit was 55 mph at exit 36 at the time — inconceivable in today’s bumper to bumper backups.

Today? He brakes for congestion that stretches for miles from the exit to the rapidly growing Catawba County community of Sherrills Ford.

Mooresville police ticket drivers who get stuck in the middle of clogged N.C. 150 intersections.

“Cars block Lake Norman intersection so police started handing out citations to fix it,” read the headline of a Charlotte Observer story in December 2022. Fed-up drivers waiting several light cycles to pass through the intersection had complained to police.

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Cars block the N.C. 150 intersection at Williamson Road and Bluefield Road In Mooresville, N.C., on Tuesday, December 14, 2022.

More people moving to Mooresville has led to a corresponding Gotham-like rise in police, EMS and fire engine sirens blaring 24/7 a mile south of N.C. 150 at I-77 Brawley School Road exit 35, an Observer analysis of emergency response data found in December.

Lagoon, Birkdale Village plans rejected too

Huntersville also has rejected major developments for similar reasons.

Last fall, after public backlash, Lake Norman developer Jake Palillo canceled plans for an $800 million, 270-acre development that would have included a beach resort, recreational lagoon and more than 600 homes.

Voting 6-2 months earlier against the plan, the Huntersville Planning Board urged the Board of Commissioners to sink the rezoning request for the project.

Members said the project would create more traffic on N.C. 73 and would be “a total transformation from a rural corridor into a fully intensified one.” Town Board members delayed their decision after developers made substantial changes.

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Birkdale Village

In March 2023, the Huntersville Board of Commissioners denied a request by the developer of Birkdale Village to add 450 parking spaces and a multi-story mixed-use building to the longtime mixed-use community.

Residents both panned and praised the developer’s proposal at previous meetings. Many raised concerns about traffic and the height of the proposed office building, while others praised the potential benefits to the local economy.

Why Mooresville is the hot spot?

In August, Mooresville was named the fastest growing suburb in America with home values under $500,000, according to an analysis by personal-finance and investing site GoBankingRates.com.

But it’s not the only town many from the northeast have deemed attractive.

In neighboring Davidson, Mooresville Mayor Carney said, $800,000 is the median cost of a home.

“By definition, you are becoming a 55-and-older community” at that price, he said. “That’s an unhealthy community. We want to see young families continue to move here. We’re working on what Mooresville is going to look like 20 years from now.”

Mooresville has mushroomed to just under 60,000 residents but has been growing “for a long time,” Carney said. “And people forget that.”

Today, Mooresville has as many as 120,000 people coming and going each day, considering those from neighboring areas who work, shop and attend events, Carney said. He adds that traffic by the thousands on N.C. 150 is coming from Sherrills Ford.

He said 48,000 of the cars packing N.C. 150 are from Sherrills Ford.

“We are an activity center,” Mooresville commissioner Qualls said. “People come from surrounding areas to events, as well. We are also providing services for all sides around us.”

Much of the traffic bottling up the town “is coming in here to work,” she said. “We are an employment center. A very diverse employment center. Site Selection Magazine, year, after year, after year, picked us as a top site in North Carolina to go after.”

The Iredell County Economic Development Corporation fields inquiries daily from companies considering moving here, Qualls added.

“What makes Mooresville so great is the diversity of the tax base,” Carney said. “Everything from industry to sales tax, because we have the Targets and the Walmarts and the Costcos and small business owners. And the Lowe’s and Corvids.”

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This Charlotte Observer file photo shows N.C. 150 West at Perth Road near Lake Norman in Mooresville.

He was referring to the headquarters of the Lowe’s home improvement chain off I-77 exit 33 and defense-contractor Corvid Technologies off exit 31.

Corvid has developed missiles and warheads for the military, according to its website. In 2019, Corvid and another firm were awarded a $225 million contract to supply sub-orbital, rocket-based flight cars to the U.S. Navy, Naval Technology reported at the time.

Mooresville’s diverse tax base “helps us overcome the national (economic) bumps in the road,” Carney said. “If we did not have the industry here, our property taxes would be outrageous.”

“Cough drops to bombs,” Qualls said of the items produced by local manufacturers.

Team Penske, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports and other longstanding NASCAR teams and motorsports businesses also call Mooresville home.

Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville residents “all go south to work every day” in Charlotte, Carney said.

“They either go north or south. But they leave those towns. Mooresville people, half leave to go work somewhere else, and half of our workforce comes in everyday,” he said. “So we’re as balanced as we can be.”

Reporter Evan Moore contributed to this article.

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