[UPDATE:] Some good coverage of the initial steps towards TDRs in today’s soon-to-be-paywalled HeraldSun.

6:30pm Tuesday, May 9th, Battle Courtroom on Margaret Lane, Hillsborough, NC

The county is starting a dialogue on a transfer of development rights program (TDR) for Orange County.

Last year, the county recruited local citizens to the TDR taskforce. The membership is comprised of a who’s who of folk interested in local development.

Overly touted by some, the program essentially trades your right to develop one piece of property (say your farm) for the right to (over?) develop another.

The real estate industry has prepared a summary that covers TDRs fairly well from their perspective.

Locally, Nick Tennyson,executive vice president for the Home Builders Association of Durham, Orange and Chatham Counties weighed in observing “TDR is a concept that in the abstract people find interesting, but when you really start working on where it’s going to apply, it has fizzled many times in the past.” (via today’s HeraldSun).

Though troubled a bit by the eminent domain issues around TDRs, I’m interested in the concept as a potentially valuable planning and zoning tool.

Tonight Orange County will present their first pass analysis of using TDRs – I look forward to seeing the proposal.