Ballantyne

Mecklenburg County, NC (1.12M residents including Charlotte) operates the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning, Design and Development Department as a joint city-county planning agency. The county itself adopts a zoning ordinance only for limited unincorporated territory; most of Mecklenburg is inside the City of Charlotte or the six other incorporated municipalities (Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill, Pineville). Charlotte's Unified Development Ordinance (UDO, effective June 1, 2023) is the principal zoning instrument for the great majority of Mecklenburg County parcels and includes provisions for ADUs (called accessory dwelling units in the UDO) in residential districts.

• Charlotte Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) effective 2023-06-01
• N.C.G.S. Ch. 160D - Local Planning and Development Regulation

State-floor overlay: North Carolina enacted Ch. 160D to consolidate local zoning authority but has not enacted comprehensive statewide ADU preemption.

Mecklenburg County administers flood-hazard, and (where mapped) coastal, wildland-fire, historic, and airport overlays that shape ADU project feasibility. The most consistent overlay across the county is FEMA NFIP floodplain regulation; other overlays apply to specific geographies inside the county.

• FEMA NFIP Special Flood Hazard Areas in Mecklenburg County — A new ADU in a mapped SFHA must be elevated to or above the Base Flood Elevation; cost impact on the project is often material.
• Historic districts and individually-listed historic resources

Mecklenburg County issues building permits for parcels in unincorporated territory through its development services / planning department, with separate review tracks for zoning conformance, building-code compliance, on-site sewage where applicable, floodplain compliance, and addressing. Inside incorporated municipalities, city departments handle their own permits; the county's authority is geographically limited to unincorporated territory. An ADU permit application is typically processed as a residential building permit with a zoning verification step against the county's ordinance for the parcel's zoning district.