By Megan V. Williams
Wilmington, NC –
Currently a vacant motel sits on the plot of oceanfront land where town leaders hope to one day put a coastal education center and pavilion, if they can raise the money to purchase it.
The owner of the former Rolling Surf Motel has accepted an offer of 3.6 million dollars from the town. Leaders have until December 21st to decide if they will actually follow through with the purchase.
To help pay for the parcel, mayor-elect Mac Montgomery says Kure Beach is hoping to win grants from local, state, and national sources.
We have briefed this from Raleigh to Morehead City back to here, everyone we can talk to, and we find really very positive support for the idea.
Montgomery says the town doesn't have much hope of actually obtaining any grants before it has to close on the property, but says assurances from funding sources will be enough to go forward.
The town has ambitious plans if it does acquire the small parcel, including, to hear council member Dean Lambeth tell it, everything from a war memorial to a multi-use building.
The building we hope to design will partially be enclosed and an all-weather building and then the other part will be a raised patio with rocking chairs and a trellis overlooking the ocean.
Lambeth says unlike the case of Oak Island's Yaupon Pier, which that town's mayor has failed to convince its council to buy, elected officials in Kure Beach are unified in their desire to purchase the park.
CAMA set-back rules restrict what can be done with the lot, according to Lambeth, and after the owner failed to build single-family homes on the acre, he originally put it on the market at 9 million dollars. The price the town eventually negotiated is still more than Kure Beach's entire budget for this year.
But Lambeth stresses that whatever the cost, this is possibly the town's only shot to obtain a waterfront park.
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