By Catherine M. Welch
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/whqr/local-whqr-634207.mp3
Wilmington, NC – There's a patch of land along the Intracoastal Waterway called Seabreeze. During segregation, it was the one place for black beachgoers. For our series, Welcome Home,' WHQR's Catherine Welch visited to see what's happening at Seabreeze now.
Wanda Coston walks down a rough and empty road that leads to an equally neglected center of what's still known as Seabreeze, where a few buildings stand like a waterfront ghost town.
You see those oak trees over there, that was Jimmy Wheelers, that was a pavilion so people would walk from Bruces to the Pavillion
Seabreeze seems well named given the strong wind barreling in off the Intracoastal.
More than half a century ago those breezes would have been filled with the scent of clam fritters and the sound of music pouring out of the restaurants that filled these now empty lots.
In its day Seabreeze was home to an expansive and thriving beach resort. It was one of the rare places where black families could come and unwind in a segregated world.
As she surveys the corroded buildings and empty lots, Coston stops and pulls out a photo of her grandmother taken at Seabreeze in the 1940's.
You see the way my grandmother's dressed, you see that, that's her hanky. My mom and dad said people used to put on their Sunday best, beads, heels, stockings.
While she pokes around an abandoned waterfront restaurant a pickup truck slowly rolls by and before the man behind the wheel can figure out what she's doing, Coston turns, squints and like that pegs him.
Didn't you grow up here? You're a Ross? You're older.
I'm with the county but I went to school with your brothers Irvin and Bimbo, I know Irvin and Bimbo.
We'd just jump off the pier and swim over, the pier was three stories high and the caf was there.
I don't remember the caf but I remember Bruce's.
Much of what they remember is gone. Hurricanes over the decades washed the Seabreeze resort away in bits and pieces until Diana delivered the final blow in 1984. That was around the time Coston returned to Wilmington to find only remnants of the Seabreeze her family had enjoyed for generations.
Coston came home to take a job in the county's planning department. And she made it her job to resurrect Seabreeze not as a resort like in the 1940's or even the laid back hang out she knew in the 60's. But as a modern mixed use development.
What happened?
Nothing, laughs, pretty much.
Coston says some residents mistrusted the county's involvement and anyway most of the major stakeholders were either gone or too old to push the effort forward. An old restaurant, The Ponca, is typical of what Coston ran into while trying to organize landowners.
The owner, when I came back just lost it. Had gotten in some legal trouble, bondsman, they used this property and he forfeited the bond and then the person who owned it, I knew, Mr. Carter, he was dying
And often where property owners died Coston says the children couldn't agree on what to do with the land. She says the tangled ownership has long deterred developers. But it's coming. An out of state developer is building what's called Seabreeze Sound on streets with names like Navigator and Salt Spray Lane. It's the kind of place Coston saw coming.
We knew that this place was a diamond in the rough, we knew it.
Real estate agent David Robertson shows off a three-story house with decks on each floor and a pier. And as he gazes across the water to Carolina Beach, he says an undeveloped waterfront neighborhood like Seabreeze is a rare find - making a house like this one at $1.3 million a steal.
You look across the Intracoastal totally on the peninsula on the end there is totally built up and this will only follow. So I think again, a great time to get in, this whole area is just booming, lots of things for sale, lots of people buying, you hear the construction in the back ground, things being built, people who have bought are building homes, people buying existing homes on the water. It's a good thing.
But for Wands Coston it's a sad thing. Sad because the people who will live in these houses may never know about the people who enjoyed it before. She struggles every time people ask her to show them around Seabreeze.
It really saddens me when I come down here so I don't like to come down here.
What saddens?
Just the way this place looks and what hasn't happened and what could have happened and what can happen.
As long as people like Coston keep their distance, who's to tell the story of Seabreeze? There isn't even a historical marker informing new residents that for generations, black families from all over the south came here to escape segregation and enjoy the beach.
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