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Park property: Last month, we reported on the lack of clarity about who owned the largest portion of a 25-acre property being purchased by the City of Wilmington, with roughly $8 million from The Endowment and $1 million from New Hanover County. The property was composed of several parcels, all owned by LLCs. The largest, a 19-acre plot of land, had just recently been acquired by an LLC, and no information about the ownership or management was available.
Updated property records now show that Mark Maynard, Sr., founder of Wilmington-based development firm Tribute Companies, signed as manager of the LLC. Maynard had previously been assembling adjacent properties, including some tied up in court by inheritance disputes.
It remains unclear why Maynard and Tribute Companies abandoned plans to develop the land in favor of selling it to Wilmington. However, market perturbations and uncertainty have made the already complicated business of real estate development even more fraught. At the end of the day, the opportunity to cash out may have simply been the best deal on offer. As for theories that there was more going on with the park deal, well, for now, they are at best just theories.
Taking a toll: Southeastern North Carolina continues slouching towards a toll bridge.
Back in 2021, the idea was first floated, apparently with some support from then-Governor Roy Cooper’s office. An anonymous and unsolicited bid was considered and not long thereafter shot down – but the problem didn’t go away: NCDOT says it doesn't have the money to replace the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, which is essentially at the end of its functional lifespan.
Five years later, the bridge’s expected cost has more than doubled to over a billion dollars, meaning that a hard-won federal grant of roughly $250 million now feels, insanely, like chump change, a brief nova of bipartisanship that’s now faded.
For many years, local leaders seemed to feel they could pull off a miracle of brinksmanship and negotiation. Basically, by keeping the toll option on the table, they could make the bridge project more attractive to grants and state funding. The ultimate goal was to nix the toll once enough other money was committed.
“Trust the process,” a NCDOT board member told Wilmington City Council a year ago, encouraging them to essentially go along to get along, and knock it off with the saber-rattling resolutions.
But a billion-dollar sleight of budgetary hand seems increasingly unlikely, and the mood of local leaders now seems to be mostly depressed resignation, with a smattering of indignant disbelief.
Recently, a new private toll was proposed by Delivering Bridges, a spin-off of United Bridge Partners, which submitted the original toll proposal to Cape Fear-area officials back in 2021. The company, registered in Delaware (world champion of hosting anonymous LLCs), has approached other funding-strapped communities that need new bridges.
I’ve heard from a few starry-eyed holdouts that things might still resolve in our favor, and that the additional hundreds of millions of dollars will materialize before we’re saddled with a toll. But if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Voter fraud: On Friday, I heard that James Osborne, partner of former New Hanover County school board candidate Rick Southerland, had been arrested. It’s not clear whether he’s been taken into custody, but as Port City Daily first reported, an FBI agent filed for an arrest warrant on Monday, March 23, accusing Osborne of voter fraud.
As a convicted felon on 15 years of supervised release (i.e., probation), Osborne is ineligible to vote in North Carolina. But according to election and court records, he did just that – in Brunswick County in November 2024, and in New Hanover County in November 2025 and February 2026. Each time, Osborne certified or otherwise affirmed that he was not a felon on any kind of probation or parole.
The situation intersects with the developing story of New Hanover County Election Director DeNay Harris, currently on paid leave while the state processes a petition to remove her.
Prior to our recent reporting about Osborne, it appears he flew under the radar, as past elections offices in both counties failed to remove him from the voter rolls. It’s unclear how long that would have continued to be the case.
According to county email records, during the primary election period, the elections office received four phone calls about Osbonre’s ineligibility; after our reporting earlier this month, other inquiries followed. Osborne would later file paperwork to invalidate his own vote. While the petition to remove Harris is not yet public, based on our reporting, I think there’s a good chance that failing to properly investigate Osborne’s vote will likely be among the causes for termination.
Lastly, I’ll note that when I interviewed Osborne, he told me in no uncertain terms that he had complied completely with the terms of his supervised release after serving his time in prison. Court records indicate that was not at all true.
In a filing on Friday, a federal probation officer based in Wilmington petitioned the court to hold a hearing to revoke the current term of Osborne’s supervised release. The officer noted four probation violations between 2023 and 2025, including possession of adult pornography, use of cannabis and methamphetamine, and failure to obey curfew. The court initially took no action beyond the drug testing and treatment that were already required; later, the court required electronic monitoring and imposed a curfew.
All in all, it’s a sad postscript to a sad story.
