Custom home builder in Kure Beach, North Carolina.

Here's what Kure Beach decides for your lot.

We build new homes and remodel existing ones in Kure Beach, from our home base in Southport.

• Where the map sets a flood height, the house must sit one foot above it.
• The 35-foot height cap can be measured from the top of the slab at the front entry.
• Outside the B-1 and fire districts, buildings and paving can take up to 65 percent of the lot.

At a glance

County

New Hanover County

Jurisdiction

Town of Kure Beach: the town zones and permits its own land under the Kure Beach Code

Ultimate design wind speed

150 mph on every lot in town (2018 NC Residential Code)

From Southport

About 35 minutes by NCDOT ferry, or about 70 minutes by road through Wilmington (about 45 miles)

Flood maps

FEMA Flood Map Service Center and the NC Flood Risk Information System, read for the parcel

Residential Contractor License #109520 · Member, Brunswick County Home Builders Association

Every Kure Beach house stops at thirty-five feet.

Jurisdiction

Town of Kure Beach, New Hanover County: an incorporated town that zones and permits its own land under the Kure Beach Code

Adopted code

Kure Beach Code, Chapter 15 (Zoning Regulations) and Chapter 13.20 (Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance, Coastal Regular Phase), adopted by the Town Council

Who reviews

Town Building Inspector at 117 Settlers Lane (building, zoning and floodplain development permits; designated Floodplain Administrator); Technical Review Committee, drawn from the Planning and Zoning Commission (height exceptions); Board of Adjustment (appeals and flood variances)

Flood maps

FEMA's Flood Insurance Study and DFIRM panels for New Hanover County, adopted by reference; read the current panel at the FEMA Map Service Center or the NC Flood Risk Information System for the parcel

Ultimate design wind speed

150 mph east of US 17 (2018 NC Residential Code, Table R301.2(4), footnote h); the town sits entirely on that side of the line

Kure Beach is an incorporated town. The Kure Beach Code (KBC), adopted by the town council, governs zoning, flood management and construction review inside the town limits. New Hanover County's Unified Development Ordinance applies instead in unincorporated communities such as Ogden or Myrtle Grove. A Kure Beach permit starts and ends at Town Hall, at 117 Settlers Lane.

A residential permit here stays in town hands from application to certificate of occupancy. The Building Inspector issues building and zoning permits and doubles as the town's designated Floodplain Administrator, carrying floodplain development permits, inspections and stop-work authority inside the mapped flood hazard areas.

A rooftop feature that needs more height than the limit allows goes to a Technical Review Committee. That includes a spire, a cupola, an antenna, a water tank, a ventilator, or a chimney, anything not meant to be occupied. That committee is drawn from the town's own Planning and Zoning Commission. The application carries a $250 fee, and a submittal deadline twenty days ahead of the first Wednesday of the month. An appeal goes to Town Council through the Town Clerk. Refusals by the Building Inspector, and variances under the flood ordinance, go instead to the town's Board of Adjustment.

Near the ocean or the river, a lot can need a state permit under CAMA, the Coastal Area Management Act. The town is also on the Division of Coastal Management's list of local governments with their own CAMA Local Permit Officers, so a CAMA minor permit is handled in town. A CAMA major permit goes to the Division.

Chapter 15 of the code lays out the zoning map. Residential districts run RA-1 through RA-4. There are RA-1A, RA-2A and RA-3A variants, plus an RA-2T trailer district. A handful of business and mixed districts line the town's short commercial stretch. In the RA-1 district, the code's dimensional table sets a minimum lot of 5,000 square feet and a minimum lot width of fifty feet. It also sets a twenty-foot front and corner setback, a five-foot side setback, and a ten-foot rear setback. Those figures are cut to the size of the lots much of the town was originally platted in. The other residential districts carry their own tables, tighter or looser by district. Which one governs a given parcel is read off the zoning map with the Building Inspector.

Over all of them sits the thirty-five-foot ceiling. No building may be built, rebuilt or structurally altered above it. The code measures building height from the mean elevation of the finished grade under the building to the highest point of the roof (KBC 15.02.010). For new construction and renovations, height may instead be measured from the top of the slab at the front entry (KBC 15.36.150). On an elevated lot, where finished floor and finished grade sit several feet apart, that starting point can decide whether a second-floor ceiling fits.

A separate part of the code caps how much of a lot may be covered. The caps are tight enough to change a floor plan. One cap covers the whole lot, outside the town's B-1 business district and its established fire district. Outside those two districts, no permit issues where buildings, other structures and impervious ground-covering surface together exceed 65 percent of the lot. Impervious surface means hard cover, such as paving. On residential lots, impervious cover inside the side yard is capped at 15 percent of that yard. A driveway in the front yard is capped at 72 percent of lot width. A driveway or impervious surface crossing the town right-of-way is capped at 49 percent of lot width. Permeable materials count the same as any other surface. The Building Inspector confirms whether the fire-district boundary reaches a particular address.

New construction in Kure Beach fits a fifty-foot lot.

Custom homes on a Kure Beach lot start with a tight footprint. From the first sketch, the plan works around a 5,000-square-foot minimum lot in RA-1, a five-foot side yard, and a thirty-five-foot ceiling. It also works around a coverage cap counted across everything impervious, and a flood elevation the lowest floor has to clear. A plan built around those limits from the start fares better in review than one that meets them halfway through design.

Much of the town's housing stock predates the maps it now answers to. Under the town's flood ordinance, a building is an existing structure if construction started before January 6, 1982. That is the date the first flood insurance rate map took effect here, and many Kure Beach cottages are older. Renovating one of them reaches the substantial-improvement rule quickly. The ordinance adds up any combination of repairs, reconstruction, rehabilitation, addition or other improvement in any one-year period. If that cost equals or exceeds 50 percent of the structure's market value before the work starts, the project is a substantial improvement. Then the whole building has to meet the current regulatory flood protection elevation, whatever the scope of the original work. That is the height the town sets for the lowest floor. Market value in that calculation is the building alone, without the land or any accessory structures. The code allows three ways to set it: independent certified appraisal, depreciated replacement cost, or adjusted tax-assessed value.

Two features of that rule change how a renovation gets scoped. The one-year window means back-to-back phases in the same year count together. And a structure that has taken substantial damage is treated as substantially improved, whatever work is actually done afterward. Substantial damage means restoration costs reaching 50 percent of market value in a single year. It also covers two flood events in a decade whose repairs average 25 percent. The ordinance carves out only two things. One is correcting existing health, sanitary or safety violations, kept to the minimum needed for safe living conditions. The other is alterations to a designated historic structure approved by variance. So the valuation question goes to the Floodplain Administrator before a Kure Beach renovation is priced. The answer decides whether the project is a kitchen or a lift.

Accessory dwelling units are a narrow question in Kure Beach. In the RA-1 and RA-2 districts, the permitted-use lists put two conditions on accessory buildings (KBC 15.10.020 and 15.14.020). No accessory building may be rented or occupied, and none may go up before the main building. That rules out a freestanding second unit there. A two-family dwelling is a different path to a second unit. RA-2 permits one- and two-family dwellings. RA-3 also permits multi-family dwellings (KBC 15.20.020). RA-4 permits one- and two-family dwellings, townhouses and condominiums (KBC 15.24.020). The Building Inspector confirms what a specific lot allows. Where a second unit is allowed, it needs the same envelope and moisture control as the house around it.

Three more sections of the code shape a Kure Beach project whether or not an accessory unit is involved. One regulates where an accessory building (a garage, a shed, a pool cabana) may sit on a residential lot. It also sets how large and how tall that building may be. A landscaping and vegetation preservation section requires the Building Inspector's approval in two cases. One is removing regulated vegetation above a stated trunk caliper, or thickness. The other is adding impervious surface or fill. Some already-developed single-family lots are exempt. On oceanfront parcels, KBC 11.20 sets a deck limit. An uncovered, single-level deck that encroaches into the town's Perpetual Beach Renourishment Easement is capped at 200 square feet. It has to be part of the beach accessway, and no higher than it. It must also stay landward of the pre-project vegetation line, on top of whatever the CAMA ocean-hazard setback allows. The town or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can require an encroaching deck removed at the owner's expense. The work still has to satisfy CAMA and every other state and local rule.

Kure Beach runs from the fishing pier down to Fort Fisher.

Kure Beach holds the quieter stretch of Pleasure Island, south of Carolina Beach. It runs from a fishing-pier center down to Fort Fisher, where state land carries on to the ferry landing at the island's tip.

Kure Beach sits at the south end of Pleasure Island, the barrier strand it shares with Carolina Beach to the north. The Atlantic runs along one side, and the mouth of the Cape Fear River closes the other. It is a town of under a square mile (U.S. Census Bureau), built low and close together. A single main corridor runs along Fort Fisher Boulevard, with low rooflines throughout. A fishing pier, with the K Avenue blocks around it, stands in for a downtown. The low skyline comes from the town's zoning code, which holds every building to thirty-five feet. That one line has set the scale of everything raised here since. South of the last residential street, the land turns to state and federal ground. First comes Fort Fisher State Historic Site and the aquarium beside it. Then Fort Fisher State Recreation Area follows. Then the road ends at the ferry landing on the river.

That short run of geography does most of the explaining. A lot here can be oceanfront, second-row behind it, or interior grid a block or two off either water. On the west side toward the river, a smaller number of parcels face the Cape Fear instead. All of them sit close to salt water, and the town reviews every one under its own code.

• Oceanfront lots directly on Fort Fisher Boulevard, many inside a coastal high hazard flood zone or the reach of CAMA's ocean setback
• Second-row lots behind the front line, still salt-exposed but often reading a different flood zone than the row in front of them
• Interior grid lots off K Avenue and the streets around it, the most conventional ground the town has to offer
• River-side parcels on the west edge of town, reached off Dow Road, carrying their own drainage, access and bulkhead questions

North of the town line the same strand continues as Carolina Beach under its own code. Elsewhere in the county, unincorporated communities such as Myrtle Grove sit on the mainland side of the sound, a different kind of New Hanover lot.

Open water on two sides means salt and wind on every wall.

Kure Beach has one wind number. The 2018 NC Residential Code's Table R301.2(4) puts New Hanover County at 150 mph ultimate design wind speed east of US 17, under footnote h. The whole town lies on that side of the line. Exposure category is the piece the table leaves for the design professional to work out, lot by lot. It rates how open the ground around a house is to the wind. On a strip of land this size, with open water on both flanks, the sheltered classification a house might claim well inland rarely fits.

Salt behaves the way it does on every barrier island. Concentration is highest near the surf and falls off with distance from it. But on a lot this close to open water, it never falls to zero, on the oceanfront or on the river side. A connector or a piece of exterior equipment on a second-row lot off K Avenue sees less salt than one directly on the oceanfront. It still sees more than the same part would see well inland; nothing on this island counts as sheltered. That gradient is why fastener and connector metallurgy is treated as a durability decision on a Kure Beach project. Why coastal metallurgy is a design decision explains the point at greater length.

Flood mapping on this island follows a pattern, and the panel still decides. Oceanfront ground is frequently mapped Zone VE, the coastal high hazard area; second-row and river-side lots more often carry an AE designation. Which one applies to a given parcel is a FEMA panel question. The site read that opens every project settles it alongside the wind exposure category. Foundation type, load path and opening protection all follow from that answer.

The town's own flood ordinance is explicit about where the severe zone stops. It defines the coastal high hazard area as running from offshore to the inland limit of the primary frontal dune. That dune is the ridge of sand immediately landward of the beach. Its inland limit falls where a relatively steep slope turns relatively mild. Behind that line, the flood map shows the Limit of Moderate Wave Action (LiMWA) line. The Coastal A Zone is the band between it and the VE zone. That band is usually not labeled as a zone on the map. A lot can therefore sit outside the mapped VE boundary and still stand in wave-affected water. The panel doesn't draw that water as a distinct zone. That's why the site analysis reads the LiMWA line alongside the flood zone.

At this end of the island, salt and wind are where the design starts.

The durability thinking behind our assemblies holds everywhere we work. What sets this town apart is how little ground it leaves to get away from salt and wind. The Atlantic runs along one edge, the Cape Fear along the other, with under a square mile of town in between.

We look for the gap between roofs where a Kure Beach view opens.

RA-1 dimensional minimums

5,000 sq ft lot, 50 ft width, 20 ft front/corner setback, 5 ft side setback, 10 ft rear setback (KBC 15.10.030); other residential districts carry their own tables

Height limit

Thirty-five feet (KBC 15.36.130), measured from the mean finished grade under the building to the highest point of the roof (KBC 15.02.010); may instead be measured, for new construction or renovation, from the top of the slab at the front entry (KBC 15.36.150); non-occupiable appurtenances may seek an exception through the Technical Review Committee (KBC 15.36.160)

Regulatory flood protection elevation

Base flood elevation plus 1 ft of freeboard where a BFE is set; at least 1 ft above highest adjacent grade where none is (KBC 13.20.020)

Reference level

Top of the lowest floor in Zones A, AE, AH, AO and A99; bottom of the lowest horizontal structural member of the lowest floor in Zone VE (KBC 13.20.020)

The site analysis is where a Kure Beach parcel gets read. We deliver it as a document before design starts. It covers the wind exposure category, the flood zone, and the regulatory flood protection elevation that follows from it. It names the zoning district that governs the lot, with its setbacks and its coverage cap. It maps where a view corridor toward the ocean or the river opens between the neighboring roofs. And it tracks how sun and prevailing wind cross a lot this size through the year. It goes into the client's project workspace, so every later decision traces back to something the site showed.

Exposure category is a parcel-by-parcel question here. A true oceanfront lot on Fort Fisher Boulevard reads differently from an interior lot a block off K Avenue, with houses standing on three sides. Both sit inside the same 150 mph wind zone. The analysis works out which category actually fits that specific parcel, because that classification sets the pressures the structural design has to resist.

On the flood side, Kure Beach sets a regulatory flood protection elevation. Where a base flood elevation (BFE) has been established, that elevation is the BFE plus one foot of freeboard. The BFE is the water height FEMA's map sets for a flood with a 1 percent chance of happening in any year. Freeboard is the extra height the town adds above it. Where no BFE has been set, the elevation is at least one foot above the highest adjacent grade. That is the highest natural ground next to the planned walls, before construction. What that elevation is measured to changes with the zone, and the difference is structural. In Zone A or AE, the reference level is the top of the lowest floor. In Zone VE, it is the bottom of the lowest horizontal structural member of that floor. On a VE lot, the girders themselves have to clear the regulatory elevation. That lifts the whole house. Where a lot falls in the coastal high hazard area, the code also requires a V-Zone certification before a floodplain development permit issues. That certification is engineered plans showing the foundation and any breakaway wall design. A registered engineer or architect then has to certify the finished construction against those plans, before the certificate of occupancy follows. The analysis establishes which of those paths a lot is on before design work gets ahead of it.

A thirty-five-foot ceiling sits above. A flood elevation pushes the first floor up from below. Between the two, the vertical budget on a Kure Beach lot is largely spent by the time design starts. A real ocean or river view is usually earned on the second floor. The analysis maps where the sightline clears the roofs on either side, before glass is allocated to it. The ground level counts against that same budget. The flood ordinance has a narrow exception for a ground-level enclosure. It counts as something other than the lowest floor only when two things hold. It stays unfinished or built of flood-resistant material. And it is used solely for parking, building access or limited storage. Finish it out, and it becomes the lowest floor, with the elevation requirement following it up. That is a decision put in front of a client at the start.

That early read is the standard applied to lots this tight. The margins here are thin: a five-foot side yard, a thirty-five-foot ceiling, a reference level fixed by a flood zone. A plan that arrives already decided has almost nowhere to give.

FORTIFIED Gold, sized for the end of the island.

At the south end of Pleasure Island, a house stands with open water on two sides. Salt air sits between the wind and the wall. That condition is why we pursue FORTIFIED Gold here. It is the highest tier of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety standard. An independent evaluator with no stake in the outcome checks the work. The opening-protection requirement earns its keep on a strand where the wind figure stays at 150 mph. Every window and door on the ocean-facing wall carries its impact rating from the first drawing. That rating holds through framing and finish. The continuous load path Gold requires runs from the sealed roof deck, down through the wall framing and the floor system, into the foundation. That foundation might be a slab, a crawlspace, or the piles a VE lot calls for.

Connector and fastener metallurgy is a durability decision at this end of the island. A hurricane clip, a hold-down or a railing bracket specified for a wooded inland lot ages faster a few hundred feet from the surf. So the selection is made at the drawing stage against the parcel's salt exposure, before anything has had the chance to streak or seize.

The airtightness target is sub-1.0 ACH50. It's written into the drawings, carried into construction, and confirmed by blower door before handover. Until the blower door on that specific Kure Beach house reports the number, it's a design target. Controlling where humid coastal air enters the envelope matters as much on a river-side lot as on the oceanfront. The whole town sits close enough to two bodies of water that outdoor humidity rarely drops for long. The continuous air barrier is traced across every penetration. On an elevated foundation, it also crosses the floor-to-wall transition, where a pile-supported house offers air the most joints to find.

Mechanical equipment is sized to the load the envelope actually produces. An oversized system on a tight house satisfies the thermostat and shuts off before it has pulled meaningful humidity out of the air. Right-sized dehumidification is treated as its own design decision here. The reasoning behind it is set out in moisture planning on a narrow island lot.

The standard is the same at this end of the island, with less room for it to fail.

Along US 421, the lots change block by block.

Fort Fisher Boulevard carries US 421 the length of the town and, with it, most of the oceanfront and second-row lots. The oceanfront rows carry the heaviest flood and CAMA exposure, frequently mapped Zone VE and frequently inside CAMA's ocean setback. The second-row blocks just behind them trade a step of setback for, often though not always, a step down in flood severity.

K Avenue and the streets around the fishing pier form the closest thing the town has to a center. It is a short stretch of shops and the pier itself. Interior grid lots fan out from there on both the ocean and river sides. Lots here tend to be the most conventional the town offers. They sit inside the same wind zone and the same code. But they're a block or two back from the front, away from the most severe flood designations.

Dow Road runs along the town's west edge, the second north-south route on the island and the way most river-facing lots are reached. Parcels here look toward the Cape Fear, with their own drainage questions and, where a lot backs onto the water, their own bulkhead questions. The flood ordinance counts bulkheads, piers, docks, landings, ramps, pools, fill and erosion-control measures as development activity in their own right. Each needs a floodplain development permit inside a mapped flood hazard area. The flood picture on this side often reads differently from the oceanfront, and a current FEMA panel for the parcel settles it.

South of the last residential block, the town gives way to state and federal ground. First is Fort Fisher State Historic Site and the aquarium beside it. Then Fort Fisher State Recreation Area runs down to the ferry landing where Pleasure Island ends. That ground fixes the town's southern edge and much of its character. It's quiet past the last house, with the ferry queue as the final piece of infrastructure before the river. Across the river mouth, island towns like Caswell Beach and Oak Island share much of Kure Beach's exposure, under codes of their own.

Tropical Tides designs and directs Kure Beach projects from Southport, our home base across the river mouth. The NCDOT ferry takes about 35 minutes, then a few minutes on US 421. By road through Wilmington, the trip is about 70 minutes (about 45 miles). From the pier blocks to Dow Road, construction is partner-executed under our direction. We hold North Carolina Residential Contractor License #109520, and we're members of the Brunswick County Home Builders Association. Our phone number is 910-946-5512.