Kure Beach is a small town, under 1 square mile in area with less than 3,000 residents. Unlike a lot of other communities in the Wilmington area, its population isn’t expected to grow a lot more in the years to come.

The Pleasure Island municipality has less than 170 buildable vacant lots left, said Kure Beach Mayor Allen Oliver.

“We can’t grow. We’ve got Carolina Beach to the north and state property to the south,” he said. “We’re pretty much boxed in.”

A lot of new development, Oliver said, is coming in the form of the demolition of older homes to make way for more modern dwellings.

But these facts don’t mean Kure Beach can ignore its infrastructure, he said.

For example, the town has been completing an inventory of its aging water system as officials look at ways to pay for and make improvements and updates.

“That’s going to be a big issue for us in the future – how we’re going to manage our water and sewer needs,” the mayor said.

According to the town’s website, Kure Beach was incorporated in 1947. Named after the Kure family, the town was once covered by a maritime forest that held the land in place during storms.

These days, storm protection efforts come in the form of nourishment projects by the Army Corps of Engineers typically at three-year intervals. In the state budget signed into law by Gov. Josh Stein on July 7, the spending plan allocated nearly $6.3 million for the Kure Beach Coastal Storm Risk Management Project. The funding matches $2.8 million in local funds and nearly $10.7 million in federal funds for a future Pleasure Island nourishment project, according to the office of state Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover.

For such projects, officials coordinate to try to understand what a potential budget could be for the next time a beach town’s nourishment project is scheduled, said Bryan Hall, New Hanover County’s coastal protection coordinator.

The Army Corps needs money on hand before a project begins, Hall said.

“The goal always is to have the money ready to go for when a project comes up,” he said.
Potential storms are always a major concern, officials said.

Oliver said one of the issues that concerns him most is the psychological impact of Kure Beach not having a significant storm – “knock on wood” – in many years.

“I think our residents tend to get complacent, and you have to take these storms seriously,” Oliver said. “I think the town does a really good job of trying to prepare our citizens for that. We do hurricane/storm preparedness talks every spring. We have a hurricane plan that we put into place.”

The town plans to mark the 30th anniversary of Hurricane Fran. The storm made landfall in the Wilmington area Sept. 5, 1996, causing massive damage to local beach towns and throughout North Carolina. 

“Building codes have changed. I think buildings are better, stronger,” Oliver said, “but I still think we have to be mindful of how powerful storms are.”