The Helm inching toward reality
February 20, 2009By Ken Little
Ground could be broken later this year for The Helm, a long-anticipated condominium complex in Wrightsville Beach.
Financing still needs to be firmed up, but those close to the project believe remaining details will be ironed out in upcoming months.
Officials said the board of aldermen should act Feb. 26 on a request to alter a mixed-use conditional permit to include a swimming pool in the three-story, 23-unit development planned on East Salisbury Street, near Johnnie Mercer Pier. The Helm will also incorporate retail space and a parking area.
Aldermen recently approved extending The Helm’s mixed-use conditional use permit. A final hurdle involves the board granting a building permit for developers Seascape at Wrightsville Beach LLC.
“We’re ready to move forward,” said Bob Simpson, Wrightsville Beach town manager.
Thomas Construction Group of Wilmington has been chosen as project contractor, said David Lisle, of Lisle Architecture & Design, Inc.
“There is movement. We’ve selected the contractor and we’re in the process of finishing the final drawings and getting ready for the permit,” said Lisle, who is the chief architect on the project.
Lisle anticipates submitting plans and formally applying for a building permit by April.
Land is already cleared for the 60,000-square foot structure, most of which will be built on the site of the former Ocean View Motel. Once financing is arranged, Lisle anticipates work beginning by the end of the summer. Construction will cost about $11 million and be complete within 16 to 18 months, he said.
Wrightsville Beach officials and Lisle said The Helm will prove beneficial both in terms of appearance and tax base enhancement.
“There’s no doubt it will be a much-improved area,” Lisle said. “Most of the site construction issues have already been resolved, so I think we’re in good shape.”
The Helm was conceived around 2005 by W. Ward Manning Jr., an active local developer who also was the prime mover in a series of proposed residential and commercial projects in Carolina Beach. He was also a builder of custom homes in the Charlotte and Wilmington areas. Manning died in March 2008 in the crash of the private airplane he was piloting, putting a temporary halt to The Helm project. When the local real estate worsened several months later as the nation’s economy sank into a recession, finding a lender to finance the project became a challenge.
Seascape is now in the hands of a consortium of 43 investors from across the country originally brought together by Manning. Three of those investors form a management committee, with one functioning as managing director. Seascape’s interests are handled on a day-to-day basis by Harry Ferguson, a Pennsylvania-based manger of large real estate developments. Ferguson was retained by the investors to help jump-start the development process.
“The Manning company has absolutely nothing to do with the project any longer. (The investors) organized themselves,” Ferguson said.
Manning Companies LLC is no longer listed as the registered agent of The Helm project. N.C. Secretary of State records list a Raleigh-based company called Business Filings Inc. as the agent of Seascape and 90 other companies and investment groups. Repeated telephone attempts to reach Travis Manning, operations manager of Manning Companies LLC, were unsuccessful. Manning is the son of Ward Manning Jr.
“The project is moving forward. They’re in the financing phase of it, and that’s a little more difficult than it was two years ago,” Ferguson said. “We are vigorously pursuing financing. The start light is blinking, we just can’t push it yet.”
The investment group is optimistic a package can be worked out soon. “Lenders are interested,” Ferguson said.
“We’re talking to number of lenders, but this isn’t the same world it was 18 months ago,” he said. “We’re doing everything that needs to be done so that when the financing is secured, we can move forward.”
Tony Wilson, Wrightsville Beach director of planning and parks, said town officials would like to see The Helm launch this year.
“It would be great if it starts in 2009,” he said. “It definitely will be an improvement over what was there. It will be an improvement to the whole area.”
