Here is an article appearing in the Wilmington Star News on Sunday about the vanishing piers along the coast of the Carolinas. Good read. If you have the time, get involved. This problem affects all of us.
Preserving Piers
Wilmington Star
As land values skyrocket, the privately owned havens for anglers are frequently being replaced by homes
The Long Beach Pier in Oak Island is gone, torn down last year to make way for large oceanfront homes.
The Carolina Beach Fishing Pier is for sale. The asking price of $3 million is a bargain, considering its present tax value is $3,380,237, up from $698,755 in 1999.
For years, fishing piers served as the central focus of many small beach towns. They provided economic benefits, encouraging tourism during the "shoulder seasons" of spring and fall when the water was too cold for most swimmers. They were places where the same anglers return year after year, generation after generation.
But rising taxes and operating costs, frequent damage from storms and skyrocketing land values threaten the state's fishing piers. In 1980, 36 stretched out from the North Carolina shoreline. Today, just 20 privately owned, commercially operated piers open to the public survive.
The threat was documented in the recently completed Waterfront Access Study Committee's Final Report, commissioned by the General Assembly to study the loss of diversity of uses of land along the coast. The main losers, the report says, are "anglers of modest means" who pay a daily fee, typically less than $10, for a day out over the water.
The study recommends the state's Aquarium Division begin operating three piers for the public's benefit, and it also offers recommendations on tax changes and funding repairs after storms. But some are wary of the state competing with private operators.
Angling to save piers
Al Baird, 47, general manager of a specialty chemical plant, grew up coming to the Outer Banks with his family from Pittsburgh. He started taking his kids there in the 1990s, when he lived in the Chicago area. He moved to Fort Mill, S.C., just south of Charlotte, in 2000.
After reading Robert Goldstein's book Coastal Fishing in the Carolinas, he decided he wanted to take his son, Chris, 17, fishing from every pier in North Carolina.
"I thought it would be pretty cool to go on this fishing trip," he said. "I kept planning it, and finally I realized in 2005 that all the piers are disappearing. So we blocked out a week around basketball camp and we took off."
Last summer, they fished from all the piers still open. While in Kure Beach, they stayed at the Rolling Surf Motel and fished from the Kure Beach Fishing Pier.
He was disappointed to find the motel slated for demolition to make way for four big houses. "I said, 'They can't do that. That town has so much old-fashioned beach charm.'●"
He said he started the N.C. Fishing Pier Society (www.ncfps.com) in April 2006 to support the piers, document their history "and to try to save some of them, if we can."
Johnnie Mercers success
Running a pier is a complicated business, even a successful one such as Johnnie Mercers Fishing Pier at Wrightsville Beach. Matt Johnson owns the pier, which his father, Robert, bought in 1969.
He credits his location at Wrightsville Beach for the pier's popularity. It was rebuilt as a concrete pier after hurricanes in 1996 destroyed it.
Employment at the pier's tackle shop, gift shop and grill swells to around 20 workers in the summer from around 12 in the winter. It barely breaks even during the winter months, but Johnson said closing it would create safety and security problems by leaving a valuable building unattended.
Maintenance is an ongoing effort. Kitchen equipment wears out, shingles tear off, metal rusts, fixtures such as chairs and furniture must be replaced.
But Johnson says it's easier than it was when Johnnie Mercers was a wooden pier. He remembers his father wrestling new pilings into place and lashing them to the pier.
State fees, including a new blanket saltwater fishing license that covers pier customers, can total more than $3,000 a year, Johnson said.
But it's worth it to see the camaraderie and joy the pier brings to customers.
In March, a woman told him she and her husband were celebrating their 10th anniversary. "Do you realize I met my husband on this pier?" she asked him.
Hurt by motel declines
Mike Robertson, who owns the Kure Beach pier, knows the attraction of a pier goes far beyond just angling for spots and blues.
"I love watching the tide change," he said. "I love watching the sun move around and the moon move around."
But he worries about the impact of losing nearby motels.
Kure Beach had already lost four motels before plans were announced to tear down the Rolling Surf. Those plans are on hold pending the resolution of regulatory issues, but the motel is closed now.
The modestly priced rooms offered by the motels were popular with fishermen.
"For a pier to be profitable, it has to have some customers," Robertson said. "It's getting harder, not unlike anything going on up and down the coast."
Kure Beach Mayor Tim Fuller said the town would like right of first refusal if Robertson ever sells the pier. He said he'd talked with the folks at the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher about operating that pier if Robertson ever sold.
But Robertson said he has no plans to sell. He likes running the pier, and so do his children. He said his pier doesn't have a large land footprint that would attract residential developers.
Help from aquariums?
The Waterfront Access Study's report, finalized last month, recommends that the N.C. Aquariums develop and operate three public fishing piers. They would have educational displays as well as fishing amenities.
Donna Moffitt, director of the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher, said she talked to Robertson more than a year ago about the Kure Beach pier, and she's aware that the Carolina Beach pier is for sale.
But she said the Aquarium Division, part of the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, needs direction from the General Assembly before it moves forward on any plan to develop or operate piers. Moffitt said the state could build piers, buy existing ones or agree to operate a pier for an owner.
The N.C. Aquarium Society, a nonprofit that supports the three state-owned aquariums, has bought Jennette's Pier in Nags Head with the idea of handing it over to the Aquarium Division. It will cost $13 million to reopen it as a 1,000-foot-long concrete pier, Moffitt said.
Emerald Isle, on Bogue Banks between Jacksonville and Morehead City, hopes to work with the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium to take over the Bogue Inlet Pier. Town Manager Frank Rush said that project would anchor a mixed-use project called Village East, combining commercial space with residential units.
The largest single landowner in the 50-acre zone is the Stanley family, which wants to sell the pier site and 15 acres around it. One developer was interested in working with the town and the Aquarium Division, but that deal fell through. Rush said the town is hoping another buyer will come forward willing to preserve the pier as part of the larger Village East project.
Moffitt said that if the Fort Fisher aquarium does operate a pier, it will likely be the last of the three aquariums to do so since plans are more advanced for the other two prospects.
Baird, founder of the Fishing Pier Society, is skeptical about the state getting into the pier business. He worries that a state-run pier might provide unwelcome competition to privately owned piers struggling to survive. Moffitt said the Aquarium Division would charge higher fees than privately owned piers to avoid taking away their business.
Tax breaks and loans
The Waterfront Access panel also recommended that fishing piers and other working waterfront properties be awarded "present use value" tax status, similar to how farmland is taxed. Since 1973, the report said, the state allows farmland to be appraised at its current use value - as a farm - instead of fair market value, shielding the owner from higher tax bills in a rising real estate market.
The committee also urged the state to look for ways to help pier owners pay for storm repairs, including perhaps establishing a low-interest loan program. Robertson, whose family has repeatedly rebuilt the Kure Beach pier after storms, said he'd welcome such a fund.
After Hurricane Fran damaged his pier in 1996, a contractor estimated rebuilding costs at $1.2 million, although Robertson did it for less by hiring labor and doing it himself.
Baird wants beach towns to support their piers. "Coastal communities need to be actively involved in getting to pier owners and businesses and say, 'What do we need to do to help?'●" he said. "●'What can we do to assist you besides just putting up another house and bringing in tax money?'●"
New to the area? Seeing change all around you? Contact me at 343-2364 or Si.Cantwell@StarNewsOnline.com.
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/p...NEWS/705280336
Till next time....
Tight lines!
Johnny "FishinTopsail"
Everyone has to be somewhere ..... I'll be fishing!
Freedom isn't free! Someone has paid, for you and for me.
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