Another week, another round of contentious debates over the future of land use in New Castle County.
At a February 6 Land Use Committee meeting, citizens packed the gallery in Wilmington to comment on the land use department’s new proposal to move the county forward with its approved 2022 comprehensive plan — after the all-but-certain demise of a previous comprehensive rezoning ordinance that would have zoned 84 parcels at once.
The newly proposed plan would call for the uncontroversial land parcels in the comprehensive plan to be split out into five ordinances, separated out by council district and geography. Those ordinances would then be subject to multiple rounds of public input.
During the Feb. 6 meeting, multiple county council members cited recent reporting by Delaware Online/The News Journal about a much-anticipated Wawa north of Middletown at 2256 Dupont Parkway that had somehow gotten lost for four years in this comprehensive rezoning process (and, to be fair, also a worldwide pandemic.)