BELHAVEN — Another 7.46 acres of Belhaven land has been offered to the county for what could be a future public waterfront boardwalk and marine industrial park.

The acreage fronts Pantego Creek adjacent the N.C. Highway 99 bridge and has been offered by the Tillman family “with the understanding that it goes to the betterment of the community,” according to county planning director Seth Laughlin. The land potentially could be used along with the first donation of 33 acres referred to as the “Cooperage Tract,” by Front Porch Acquisition LLC, and a second donation of .5 acre.

Laughlin said the downside to the property acquisition was minimal:  a short-term reduction in the county’s tax base, as the county would own the land, and the chance that the land’s past use resulted in contamination.

“The risk to the county would be to take the property over only to find costly contamination under the ground,” Laughlin said. “But this is why we’re entering in to the Brownfields program.”

The county has hired ECS, an environmental consulting firm, to do an assessment of the sites, and has applied for acceptance into the federal Brownfields program, an EPA program that provides grants and technical assistance to clean up contaminated properties. The Tillman property would be rolled into the existing Brownfields application.

“That will help shield the county and current owners from liability down the road, if environmental concerns turn up,” Laughlin said.

Previously, the land involved has been the site of lumber mills — Interstate Cooperage and J.L. Roper — in the early to mid-20^th century, Pocomoke Guano Fertilizer Storage in the mid-1920s; Belhaven Veneer and Plywood Company in the late 1940s, as well as a variety of other uses from the 1970s until 2006, including housing a marina, a marina fuel station, feed mill and fertilizer plant.

While the land donations could eventually be used for the same purposes, they were proposed for different reasons: for the owners of the Cooperage Tract, donation is a tax advantage for land originally bought for real estate development; for the Tilman property, it has to do with investing in the town.

“You’ve actually got a group of folks in Belhaven that are really motivate to help revive Belhaven economically,” Laughlin said. “The hope is to get relatively small scale businesses on site and at some point get back into the private sector. … The town of Belhaven has been very enthusiastic about partnering with the county on some level.”

This is the second eastern Beaufort County project the county has taken on in recent years. In partnership with North Carolina Wildlife Resources and grant funding from CAMA, the county has started Phase II of a boat ramp and public river access on Wrights Creek, a Pungo River tributary. Phase II included the purchase 5.88 acres of land — $200,000 of which was paid for by the county and matched by CAMA. Laughlin said it was a significant grant award considering CAMA had $900,000 to fulfill $2.5 million in requests.

“They’re giving us about a fifth of it, so that was just a huge compliment,” Laughlin said.

In addition to parking and boat ramps, public access will include at 2-acre open field surrounded on three sides by water, offering shore fishing in the short term, with futures plans for a fishing pier or boardwalk.