Officials in the tiny Jackson County town of Forest Hills can’t be blamed for wanting to have some say in the growth around their little town, but hopefully they aren’t planning to try and stop commercial growth altogether. That would be a mistake.

Two weeks ago the village board passed a 6-month moratorium on new building permits for projects in its extraterritorial jurisdiction. Mayor James Davis said the move was aimed at giving the subdivision town time to figure out how it will zone its ETJ. Councilman James Wallace said development was occurring all around. “We need a voice,” he said.

The question, however, is how loud a “voice” the council will consider necessary?

Since Forest Hills has incorporated, it has been a unique municipality. It has no water and sewer department, no police protection, and doesn’t offer its residents any of the services most towns consider basic. It was formed merely as a way to control growth within its borders.

Now, however, its intentions have changed. It wants to control growth in the area surrounding its borders, control growth all the way to the frontage road out by N.C. 107. To do so, it established an ETJ planning area.

Here’s the rub. Western Carolina University is growing, and it appears that plans for two residential-commercial developments in the ETJ of Forest Hills may be the first inklings of what many have wanted for years — something like a college town near the Cullowhee campus. A few condos, apartments, book and record stores, and coffee shops won’t make a dramatic difference, but any type of well-planned, aesthetically-pleasing commercial development close to the WCU campus will likely become a magnet of activity.

The truth is that, if done right, plans currently on the table may signal the beginning of something that will make WCU a much more appealing campus.

Forest Hills can’t stop growth along N.C. 107, but it can enact ordinances to make sure that development meets a high standard that will benefit its own tax base, the university, and all of Jackson County. Hopefully that is where the town is headed.