“New urban waterfront” planned in North Carolina

n Albemarle Sound in North Carolina, a 1,600-acre development called Sandy Point, part of which will feature a “new urban waterfront,” is expected to break ground in the next few months. Eagerly awaited by county and state officials, the 930-acre development will be supervised by Sam Young, who intends to demonstrate how communities can once again build right up to a waterfront without degrading the environment.
Young and the Fund for New Urbanism were invited to the area by a not-for-profit economic development organization, the Foundation of Renewal for Eastern North Carolina, which wanted to strengthen the economy of Clowan County. A conventional developer “typically would split the land into 75-foot lots, put in a pier, and screw up the estuary,” Young says. The aim at Sandy Point, eight miles from Edenton, an old town admired by urbanists, is to produce a more townlike pattern, with some houses built alongside or even on top of the water, yet without harming the area’s aesthetics or ecology.
As president of the Fund for Sandy Point LLC, a subsidiary of the Fund for New Urbanism, Young will be in charge of a construction project that could go on for 15 years. “This

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