In Wrightsville Beach, officials are navigating a complicated transportation conundrum.

The N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT) has set the wheels in motion to replace three of the town’s aging bridges. For the estimated $105 million project, crews will build a new bridge on Causeway Drive, crossing Banks Channel, and two new bridges on West Salisbury Street, crossing Lees Cut and Banks Channel.

“The project will remove the existing bridges and replace each with a new bridge in roughly the same location as the existing bridge,” according to a town web page on the replacements.

The town’s bridge replacement committee, chaired by Neal Andrew, has been working with state officials for the past two years.

“We are trying to develop a very collaborative effort with the DOT and their consultants to make sure that we’re getting these bridges on the island done as efficiently and effectively and with the least amount of disruption as possible,” said Andrew, who is also president of Andrew Consulting Engineers, during the bridge committee’s March meeting.

He said some of the committee’s accomplishments have included successfully lobbying for a special contract process “to allow the town to provide additional input to the questions that are being asked,” including about the heights of the bridges and the sequence of their construction.

That contract process is the construction manager/general contractor (CM/GC) method, and the state awarded the contract to Balfour Beatty.

As of the March bridge meeting, the committee didn’t have many specific details on the replacement project yet to share with the community. But they did have some information. Chad Kimes, transportation practice leader with GFT, an engineering, architecture and construction firm with an office in Wilmington, is serving as a consultant to the town on the bridge replacements. He previously worked as the NCDOT’s Division 3 engineer, overseeing the department’s projects in the Wilmington area.

“Balfour Beatty is a team that built the Surf City bridge, that built Harkers Island bridge. They built the bridge over the river on I-140,” Kimes told the bridge replacement panel in March. “All those bridges were finished ahead of schedule. So, they’ve got a really good bridge contractor for this project.”

While the estimated start date is two years away, Kimes said, “You’re going to see this contractor start before that 2028 date.”

During project preparation, crews will move utilities from the bridges, he said.

Wrightsville Beach Town Manager Haynes Brigman said that, hopefully, the actual construction work expected to have major impacts on the town can begin outside of tourist season next year.

“The town has communicated to NCDOT that we’d like for them to start after our busy season of 2027, if at all possible. … That kind of puts us in the September, October 2027 timeframe of when we have made the request to DOT to really start that work. And we’ll see what the contractor and DOT decide from that standpoint,” he said.

Brigman added, “And then we want them to, you know, go 100 miles an hour after that. So that’s where things stand.”

One of the facets of Wrightsville Beach life that the bridge replacement committee has been considering is the impact of the replacements on the John Nesbitt Loop (referred to as just “The Loop”), which includes the bridges.

Brigman said town officials have had conversations with NCDOT and the contractor about keeping “at least some form of pedestrian access available, if possible, across the bridges during construction.”

The Loop is set to undergo a separate improvement project, for which the town has hired a contractor to design, he said.

The bridge replacement committee meets again in June.

“We hope to have more definitive information when we meet again,” Andrew said, “and if ever we have very time-sensitive, important information to share, we will do that through the town communication channels and/or potentially schedule a special-called meeting of this committee.”