By Miles Layton

WINFALL — When Matt Peeler first drove up to his house on Bagley Swamp Road, an open field stretched across his front yard and the nearest neighbor sat far in the distance. Before he reached the driveway, he said, he knew he had found “my acre of happiness.”

That field is part of nearly 200 acres that a Kill Devil Hills development company wants rezoned for a 110-lot subdivision at the intersection of NC-37 and Bagley Swamp Road. Peeler, a retired Navy chief and former Perquimans County commissioner and school board member, says the project would take that view away and, he fears, send more water toward his home.

He is not alone. Michelle Nichols and her husband, Duane, who live directly across Bagley Swamp Road from the property, said they are “extremely distressed” by the proposal. In written statements to the Observer, both households described the same worries: ditches that already struggle to carry rainwater away, a rural setting they chose on purpose, and a subdivision they say is out of scale with everything around it.

I’m not going to deny that this story is a long read, but it’s important. I know where this plot of land is, so bear with me.

The request

In a Sept. 3 letter to the Perquimans County Board of Commissioners, engineer Michael J. Morway of Albemarle & Associates, Ltd., asked on behalf of Belvidere Farms LLC that two parcels totaling about 193 acres be rezoned from RA to RA-43. About 134 acres are farmland. The rest is wooded, apart from a cleared overhead power easement.

According to the rezoning application, Belvidere Farms LLC holds a conditional contract to buy the land from owner Sidney Jessup, who acquired it after the death of her father, Willis Jessup. Neal Bliken is listed as applicant on her behalf, and Jessup has authorized Albemarle & Associates to represent the project before the Planning Board and the commissioners.

The application is inconsistent on the zoning sought. One field lists the proposed zoning as RA-32, while the signed request and Morway’s letter refer to RA-43.

The plan calls for about 110 single-family lots of at least 43,000 square feet each, with three- and four-bedroom homes. Morway said the development “will not permit manufactured homes.” About 11,400 linear feet of new roadway and waterline would connect to NC-37 and Bagley Swamp Road.

Each lot would have its own septic system. Stormwater would flow through swales and pipes to ponds along Belvidere Road and Bagley Swamp Road, and a homeowners association would maintain the ponds and roads.

The developer’s case

Morway’s letter and the application, which were submitted before the neighbors’ statements, make the developer’s case for the project. Morway said construction would be phased “so as not to tax the County’s infrastructure” and that the homes would be “designed to complement the existing homes in the area.”

Most of the wooded acreage, he said, is intended to stay forested, with walking trails and boat or RV storage areas inside a wooded buffer around the perimeter. The application says the roads would be built to NCDOT and Perquimans County standards, and that water service would tie into the county’s existing system. The stormwater ponds are designed to meet the county’s stormwater ordinance and state Department of Environmental Quality permit requirements.

“It does flood”

Peeler lives on Bagley Swamp Road at the northwest corner of the property and shares a boundary with it. He said the land tilts toward that line and that most of the water from the site now runs into two ditches in front of his house.

“It does flood,” he said.

He said he worries the roads, roofs and driveways of 110 homes would make that worse, and that he does not trust the proposed pond locations. Some, he said, appear to sit over the crest of the high ground or away from where the water actually goes.

“I fear that the flood plain … that touches my property will be worse regardless of the ponds installed,” he said. He said he asked the N.C. Department of Transportation to clean the ditches a few years ago and the agency did.

A soil study included with the application reached a different conclusion about the land’s suitability for septic systems. Soil scientist David E. Meyer of Protocol Sampling Service wrote in a June 12 report that there is enough suitable soil for sand-backfilled trench systems. He also noted that his borings were taken in conditions with the ground “extremely dry from lack of recent rains.” He described his findings as preliminary.

Peeler’s concerns go beyond water. He said the main entrance would send headlights across his property at night and into the home of the neighbor next door, who lives right beside the proposed exit.

He compared the construction phase to the shipyards he came to know in the Navy, places where work goes on “without concern for how pretty it looks while things are going up.” Bagley Swamp Road, he said, would serve as the maintenance and delivery entrance for a build-out that could take decades.

“We will be dealing with the filth and trash of that development for all that time,” he said.

He also questioned the developer’s pitch about who would live there. Morway said he expects buyers to include teachers, nurses, police officers and others “from all walks of life.” Peeler said those jobs “do not exist” in the county, and that census figures show Perquimans lost population between 2010 and 2020. He said the county’s CAMA Core Land Use Plan sets its growth goals on page V-13.

“The county is stagnant regarding growth because the economic engine for us is still Chesapeake,” he said, adding that the jobs might arrive someday as that city’s sprawl moves south along U.S. 17 and I-87.

Buyers, he said, would face commutes of close to an hour each way. Peeler works as a daycare worker in Moyock and said he sees how children light up when a parent finally arrives after a long day. Those days, he said, would only get longer for the children of Belvidere Farms.

Peeler said that by his math the project would put about a third of the dwellings projected for 20 years of county growth onto this one tract, in under five years. He also noted that the county’s subdivision ordinance treats anything over six lots as a major subdivision, and said the framers of that rule never pictured 110.

He said he counted the homes along NC-37 leaving Winfall and found that the 110th sits just past Puzzletown Road, almost out of the county. A subdivision that dense, he said, is “not in keeping with the rural aesthetics” that drew him to Perquimans and led him to serve on its boards.

“We are a rural community and not a sardine packing factory,” he said.

He went further, calling the proposal “an abomination to the rural country found in the Perquimans County land use plan.” Nothing in that plan, he said, suggests a project this size is needed, and a developer who files an application and pays the fee is not entitled to approval.

He also questioned how well a homeowners association would hold up. Peeler pointed to the one at Albemarle Plantation, which he said has real enforcement power, and asked whether Belvidere Farms’ association would have the money or the authority to maintain the ponds if only a few homes sell.

“Will I see greater flooding in front of my home because the HOA doesn’t exist nor has the funding?” he asked.

Peeler, who is single and has no children, lives in a mobile home and noted that the developer’s own rules would bar his kind of housing. He said no one from the developer has contacted him or his neighbors.

“If his plan is so wonderful, why didn’t he come talk to me or my neighbors?” he said. “He didn’t. I won’t bite.”

He said he is not opposed to all growth. His recommendation is to shrink the project considerably, ring it with a berm as Albemarle Plantation does, and put both exits on NC-37, which he said is built for heavy traffic. Bagley Swamp Road, he said, is narrower and was never meant to serve a large subdivision.

“Grow within the BCC plan and not because you can apply,” he said.

Across the road

The Nicholses bought their property in 2021 and built a barndominium on nearly eight acres in 2022. They have lived there four years, according to Michelle Nichols, who grew up in Hertford and graduated from Perquimans County High School. All three of the couple’s children are Perquimans County High School graduates, she said. Two still live in the county.

Duane Nichols is retired after many years running a landscaping business. Michelle Nichols works part time and has a few years until retirement.

“We chose to move to Bagley Swamp because we wanted to spend our retirement years in a rural setting, away from heavily populated areas,” she said.

They built the house, she said, expecting privacy and a peaceful, rural atmosphere. The couple are not farmers, though local farmers use part of their land and they have thought about growing produce or raising animals there someday.

Her main worry is drainage. Rain of more than a couple of inches, she said, can flood a significant portion of the family’s land and yard until the water recedes. The Nicholses maintain their ditches, she said, but the state-maintained ditches drain only so fast.

“With substantial rainfall, the water can come very close to our home,” she said.

She said that in a particularly wet season, additional runoff could damage the property and, more seriously, put the house at risk. The family also fears that flooding or poor drainage could compromise septic systems in the area, which she called “a serious health and environmental concern” for the community.

“A development of this size would fundamentally change the rural character of our neighborhood,” she said.

Homes on Bagley Swamp Road are spread apart now, she said. She added that Belvidere Road is already busy with commuters and transfer trucks, especially during school and commuting hours, and that more than a hundred new homes would add to the congestion and raise safety concerns. The couple also worry about strain on schools and emergency services.

“We understand that communities grow and change,” she said, “but we believe development should consider the existing conditions and infrastructure of the area.”

What comes next

The application must first be checked for completeness by county planning staff. It then goes to the Planning Board, which will make a recommendation to the Board of Commissioners. The commissioners will vote on the rezoning at a legislative public hearing. A date has not been announced.

The application lists about 30 adjacent and nearby property owners, including several Bagley Swamp Road residents and heirs of multiple family estates, who are entitled to notice of the hearing.

Peeler said he hopes commissioners give the county’s history and its land-use plan real weight when they decide.

“Just because someone fills out an application and pays the application fee doesn’t mean we have to accept this kind of plan,” he said.