Last night I was driving around in Cannonsgate, a new waterfront community in Carteret County between Morehead City and Cape Carteret where I live.

There are no homes in Cannonsgate yet.  Construction is scheduled to begin on the first homes just after the new year.

Since I have seen the architectural plans, I think it will be a really nice community once it gets going.

A friend told me that he hated to see large scale developments because they were always worse for the area.

I wrote him back with a few comments on the other side of the equation.

First there is plenty of old style helter skelter development in our area.  I am glad to see much of it go since there was not a lot of planning in place when it happened.

Some of those old developments are sources of point pollution because there were no buffers required then.

At least in a development like Cannonsgate, proper storm water management is in place.  A state of the art sewage plant is on site, and water access has been provided to the residents with minimal impact on Bogue Sound.  There is also a nice trail across the marsh, and there will not be fifty docks sticking out into Bogue Sound.

I actually think it will be a nice spot once the homes are finished in the next few years.

We have enough uncontrolled development around on the Southern Outer Banks.  I think places like Cannonsgate dropped into our environment are a nice compromise between a totally planned towns like Reston, VA or Columbia, MD and the wide open development that took place in earlier decades.

 I have lived in both of those planned cities, and I like the mix of control and freedom we have in our area.  While it is not perfect and certainly not as neat or as well manicured, but it does get rid of some weird things like having no car dealership in either Reston or Columbia.

The free market does a pretty good job with a little help from the government.