SHALLOTTE, N.C. - Protecting the environment was not the primary motivation for the way developer Buddy Milliken designed his 38-acre Woodsong neighborhood.

Rather, he says he was after the same feeling of well-being he got from two picture books - "This is How We Live in the Town" and "This is How We Live in the Country" - his 17-year-old son brought home 13 years ago from a Montessori school in Wilmington, N.C.

The approach earned him the first outstanding recognition from the new Cape Fear Stewardship Development Awards program. Based on a program the S.C. Department of Natural Resources has done since the 1990s, the Cape Fear program was designed to recognize developers in Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties for exemplary protection of natural resources.

In Georgetown County, the Prince George tract development and Huntington Beach State Park have earned S.C. awards. No Horry County developments have been recognized, said S.C. DNR spokesman Brett Witt.

Those who developed the awards say they provide positive reinforcement for those who come up with plans that balance the desire for economic growth with environmental safeguards.

Wilmington Realtor Chip Berry said he believes the potential for such developments is unlimited.

A native of Murrells Inlet, Berry is a former program coordinator for the land division of S.C. DNR. He was instrumental in getting the stewardship awards program started in South Carolina, and exporting it to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.

In South Carolina, Berry said, "There were some people doing some pretty amazing things and we wanted to recognize them."

What organizers south of the border found after the awards program began, he said, was that developers would come to the DNR for advice. Organizers of the Cape Fear program hope for similar results.

The Cape Fear program has its roots with Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, but includes a broad range of backers from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington to the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association to Brunswick County government.

"All of us are in the throes of substantial growth, both residential and commercial," said Bill Hart, an elected supervisor of the New Hanover Soil and Water Conservation District and one of the program's originators.

Low-impact development

Low-impact development, said Margo Thompson, a research associate in environment and energy for the National Association of Home Builders, is that which uses a system of natural elements to control stormwater.

Things such as minimizing impervious surfaces, using grasses and native vegetation and planning the development's layout to move with the natural land contours are each a part.

"What you want to do is slow down runoff," Thompson said.

The narrow streets of Woodsong weren't necessarily designed to reduce the impervious surfaces, Milliken said, although they do. Rather, his idea was to make streets that could be friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists by reducing sight lines, setting intersections slightly off center and giving the eye interesting vistas to encourage motorists to slow down to the 10 to 12 mph the streets are designed for.

The narrow streets wind past homes nudged toward the front of their lots under a canopy of native oaks and pines. "We drove in and we said, 'Oh,'" Woodsong resident Bob Hopper said of the reaction he and his wife had when they happened into Woodsong late one afternoon.

Those streets also dip toward the center, where grates channel stormwater into a system that flows into a small lake and from there into a woodland stream that empties into a natural wetland. Should so much rain fall to overtop the lake, it is designed to spill through a roadside channel into a grassy area and woodland behind it.

Meeting human needs

Woodsong is as much about meeting human needs, about creating a sense of community in which one could live a lifetime, Milliken said.

Available residences range from 400-square-foot apartments that rent for $500 a month to $300,000 homes, and if the next phase of the development is realized as it is now envisioned, to assisted living apartments for the elderly.

His hope is that people who move there will not have to "be uprooted if you wake up one day and realize you can no longer live independently."

Milliken said he doesn't know if developments like his make as much money as other kinds of developments. But he's convinced the protection of natural areas relies on attaching value to wooded areas.

That's what Milliken has done by putting paths for residents through Woodsong's woodlands, said Brunswick Soil and Water Conservation District director Mamie Caison.

Natural and man-made

The Cape Fear awards are to be presented at a banquet Thursday night in Wilmington, where Alex Duran, a national expert on low impact development, will speak.

As in South Carolina, the N.C. winners will be able to use the stewardship award logo in marketing their properties.

Besides Woodsong, Thursday's banquet will recognize New Hanover County's Preservation Park with a significant achievement award for preservation of wooded areas and wetlands.

Hart, who helped originate the N.C. award, said Woodsong is significant because Milliken took the time to involve landscape planners at N.C. State University in his development and for his attention to blending what he built with what was naturally on the site.

"The combination gives you a social benefit," Hart said.

Which is exactly the idea Milliken had as he looked through his son's pre-kindergarten books.

"I like the idea of weaving the man-made and the natural together in a living environment," he said. "[Woodsong] all sort of oozed out."