Custom home builder in Myrtle Grove, North Carolina.

Myrtle Grove lies between the river and the sound.

Myrtle Grove is the unincorporated name New Hanover County uses for the peninsula south of Wilmington, bounded by two waters: the river along one flank, the sound along the other, with US 421 (Carolina Beach Road) and Myrtle Grove Road carrying traffic the length of it. Monkey Junction, where Carolina Beach Road crosses NC 132 (College Road), is the commercial center the surrounding neighborhoods orient around. The name dates to a gas station there whose owner kept pet monkeys to draw customers, and it took hold as bus drivers began calling the intersection Monkey Junction.

South of the junction the peninsula narrows toward Snow's Cut, the Intracoastal Waterway channel dredged between 1929 and 1930 to join the Cape Fear River to Myrtle Grove Sound, cutting the beach strip below it loose as an island. One US 421 bridge carries the road over the cut, putting Carolina Beach a few minutes from Monkey Junction and under a town code of its own. On the Myrtle Grove side of that bridge sits Seabreeze, a Black-owned beach resort that Roland and Nathan Freeman, sons of Robert Bruce Freeman Sr., founded in 1922 through their own North State Realty and Investment Company, selling home and business lots on land they held along the sound.

By the 1950s both resorts were in decline, under pressure from white opposition and encroaching development, while erosion, sped up by a new Army Corps of Engineers inlet between the waterway and the ocean, shrank the beaches. Hurricane Hazel hit Seabreeze hard in October 1954. A state highway historical marker, dedicated in 2024, stands on Carolina Beach Road near South Seabreeze Road for Seabreeze and neighboring Freeman Beach as segregation-era Black beach resorts.

Away from the cut, the peninsula holds a wide range of lots. Along River Road, older parcels sit on acreage backing onto the Cape Fear, with the working river in the view and, on the Brunswick County shore opposite, Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point. Toward the sound, a run of waterfront lots looks out across marsh and open water toward the barrier islands beyond. Between the two edges sit the subdivisions built off Carolina Beach Road and College Road from the 1990s into the 2010s, where a search usually turns up an existing house on a platted lot.

The U.S. Census Bureau recognizes Myrtle Grove as a census-designated place, covering roughly 7.2 square miles, mostly land, inside the historic Federal Point and Masonboro townships of the county. The designation is statistical, so every question a lot here raises (a setback, a tree permit, a flood elevation) goes to New Hanover County, whichever edge of the peninsula the lot sits on.

Clearing a wooded Myrtle Grove acre takes a tree permit first.

New Hanover County's Unified Development Ordinance governs zoning, subdivision, stormwater, flood and erosion control on a Myrtle Grove lot. County Planning and Land Use administers it, with its Operations and Zoning Administration office handling zoning setbacks, permitted uses, floodplain administration, CAMA minor permits and addressing, while a separate Building Safety department issues the building permit and runs the inspections once the zoning questions are settled. The district and the code settle much of a house's envelope, so we read them first in our design process, before a floor plan exists.

One county permit can land ahead of the building permit, and it is for trees. The UDO's tree retention standards in Article 5, Section 5.3.1, reach residential lots of record of an acre or more; a lot under an acre in a residential district is exempt. Where they apply, removing a regulated tree requires a tree removal permit decided by the county Planning Director, and the ordinance is explicit that the permit has to be issued before clearing, grading or any other authorization, the building permit included. On a wooded parcel along River Road, or an older acre-plus lot off Myrtle Grove Road with mature canopy over the frontage, the driveway and the building pad are partly a tree question, and the site analysis answers it before a plan is drawn.

New Hanover County's general residential districts run RA, AR, R-20, R-20S, R-15, R-10, R-7 and R-5, and the ordinance groups four of them (R-20, R-15, R-10 and R-7) for certain multi-family and attached housing types, permitting those only inside a performance residential development and only up to the district's maximum density. The district a given Myrtle Grove parcel sits in, and the lot area, width and setback minimums that come with it, come off the county zoning map and the UDO's dimensional-standards table, and we confirm them with Planning and Land Use at the start of the site analysis.

Much of the shoreline along Myrtle Grove Sound falls inside the Coastal Shorelines Area of Environmental Concern under the state's Coastal Area Management Act, so shoreline work there (a dock, a bulkhead, fill inside the setback) needs a CAMA permit. A minor permit for routine work goes through New Hanover County's Local Permit Officer, in the county's zoning office; anything larger goes through the NC Division of Coastal Management's major permit process. We confirm with the Division whether a specific shoreline carries the designation and which setback applies to it.

Jurisdiction

Unincorporated New Hanover County: the county UDO governs land use, and the county reviews and issues the permit.

Adopted code

New Hanover County Unified Development Ordinance, which holds the zoning, tree, stormwater and flood rules for the lot.

Permit authority

County Planning & Land Use (Operations and Zoning Administration) for zoning, CAMA minor permits and floodplain administration; county Building Safety, 230 Government Center Drive, for building permits, applied for through the county's COAST portal, and inspections.

Flood-map source

FEMA Flood Insurance Study dated December 6, 2019 and its DFIRM panels, adopted by UDO Section 9.6.1. Check the FEMA Map Service Center or the NC Flood Risk Information System for the panel covering a specific parcel.

Ultimate design wind speed

New Hanover County splits at US 17 under the 2018 NC Residential Code, Table R301.2(4): 140 mph west, 150 mph east. Myrtle Grove sits entirely east of that line, so the ultimate design wind speed here is 150 mph.

Rain drains slowly from flat Myrtle Grove land.

Myrtle Grove sits low and close to level. Across most of the peninsula the soils run sandy and the water table runs shallow through much of the year, and that combination decides more of a Myrtle Grove design than the wind does. Rain on level, sandy ground with the table already close beneath it moves slowly and spreads, and where it actually goes is a survey question the site analysis answers before a floor plan gets drawn.

Wind still has to be answered. Under the 2018 NC Residential Code, New Hanover County's ultimate design wind speed runs 140 mph west of US 17 and 150 mph east of it, and Myrtle Grove's peninsula lies entirely on the eastern side of that line, so the 150 mph figure applies across it. Exposure is the harder question, and the lot settles it: a sound-front lot with open marsh and water to windward reads differently in a wind study than a lot two streets back in a subdivision, with rooflines and mature trees breaking the fetch, and that reading happens on the ground, during the site walk.

Stormwater is where flat ground shows its cost, and the UDO gives it an article of its own. A stormwater permit and a stormwater management plan are required for development that accumulates 10,000 square feet or more of built-upon area on a site or as part of a common plan of development, and built-upon area is defined broadly to cover roofs, walks, patios, pool decking, drives and compacted or gravel surfaces alongside anything paved. Most single houses stay under that line on their own. A large footprint with a long drive, a terrace and a pool on an acreage parcel can approach it, and a lot inside a larger plan of development can be pulled in by the common-plan clause.

The article's opening standard reaches past its permit threshold: all land in the unincorporated county that is to be developed is to carry stormwater conveyances and control measures sufficient to protect life, property and natural resources from increased runoff, with development subject to the article designed so that post-development discharge in the 2-, 10- and 25-year storms does not exceed the pre-development rate. The County Engineer may also require a stormwater impact analysis where a site sits at or upstream of a documented flooding case. On ground with almost no natural fall, that standard shapes the grading plan from the start.

Salt on this peninsula arrives from two directions, up the Cape Fear from the ocean on one side and off Myrtle Grove Sound on the other, so a River Road lot and a sound-front lot both see airborne chloride reach fasteners, connectors and outdoor equipment, by different routes. Humidity is the constant the two waters share: on ground bounded by tidal water at both edges, the air stays humid from one shore to the other. Why coastal homes need a different standard covers the salt, and planning for moisture before it appears covers the humidity.

The wind speed comes from a table; the drainage plan comes from a survey of this particular lot.

The water table picks the foundation.

Every Myrtle Grove project opens with the formal site analysis, a written document delivered to the client's project workspace before a wall is drawn. Two waters bound this peninsula, and the ground between them barely tips one way or the other, so most of the analysis is about where water goes: how long standing rain takes to clear a given lot, how high the water table climbs beneath the building pad through a wet season, and what the current flood map records for that specific parcel. Sun, wind and view get answered once the drainage is settled.

The foundation is the first decision the water table touches. A seasonal high water table close to the surface argues against a basement outright, and it puts real pressure on a standard vented crawlspace too, since a crawlspace that sits damp for months of the year is a moisture source the house lives with every day it is occupied. The realistic choices on a typical Myrtle Grove lot are a conditioned, sealed crawlspace built to keep ground moisture out, a slab set above the seasonal high mark, or, on the wettest and lowest ground, a floor raised on piers the way flood-zone construction already requires. The site analysis decides which one fits a given lot.

Where a lot falls inside a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area, the standard the design answers to folds in the flood elevation from the outset: New Hanover County's regulatory flood protection elevation is the base flood elevation plus two feet of freeboard where a BFE has been established, or at least two feet above the highest adjacent grade where it has not. Any enclosed area below that elevation on a raised house is limited to parking, building access or storage and built of flood-resistant materials up to that line. On a sound-front or river-adjacent Myrtle Grove parcel, that elevation, read off the current FEMA map for the parcel itself, sets the height of the first floor before the floor plan does.

Two narrower flood provisions come up here as well. Where the mapping shows an approximate Zone A (a special flood hazard area FEMA has mapped without a base flood elevation), the UDO bars fill, new construction and substantial improvement within twenty feet either side of the top of bank, or five times the width of the stream, whichever is greater, unless a registered professional engineer certifies with supporting technical data that the encroachment will not raise flood levels during the base flood discharge.

The other is a disclosure. The UDO's final plat certificates carry a flood plain management disclosure: the owner certifies that before entering any agreement or conveyance with a prospective buyer, a signed statement will pass between them disclosing that the real estate lies within a flood hazard area and that the buyer has to satisfy the county's flood plain regulations before construction permits issue.

A Myrtle Grove site analysis is built to answer a short, consistent set of questions:

• which zoning district the parcel sits in, and the lot area, width and setbacks the UDO assigns it
• the seasonal high water table depth beneath the building pad, and what it rules in or rules out for the foundation
• the base flood elevation and the regulatory flood protection elevation, where the parcel is mapped in a flood hazard area
• whether the shoreline falls inside the Coastal Shorelines Area of Environmental Concern, and what a CAMA minor permit would require
• drainage paths and outfalls across ground with almost no natural fall, and where built-upon area can and cannot go
• whether the built-upon area the design wants reaches the UDO stormwater permit threshold, on the lot alone or under a common plan of development
• which protected or significant trees a tree removal permit would touch, on a wooded or older road-frontage parcel
• utility service: Cape Fear Public Utility Authority water and sewer, or well and septic under county Environmental Health
• sun across an open subdivision lot or a sound-front view, once the buildable footprint the water leaves behind is known

Open, level ground is its own kind of exposure.

Every home we design for Myrtle Grove pursues FORTIFIED Gold, the top tier of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety's construction standard, built around a continuous load path that ties the roof deck, the walls and every opening down through the frame to the foundation. On open, level ground (a subdivision lot, or a sound-front parcel with nothing tall to windward), a low house still meets a straight run of wind, so the roof deck and the connectors holding it down are specified to that exposure.

The load path is also where the standard meets the foundation the water table allowed. A sealed slab, a conditioned crawlspace and a floor raised on piers each carry uplift down to the ground differently, so the connection detailing is drawn for whichever one the site analysis produced. IBHS issues the FORTIFIED designation through an independent evaluator, from evidence documented while the house goes up.

Sub-1.0 ACH50 is the airtightness target written into the drawings and carried into construction, confirmed by a blower door test before handover. Above a shallow water table, with tidal water working both edges of the peninsula, that number decides how much humid air reaches the wall assembly. Warm, humid air finds an uncontrolled gap and meets a cooler surface somewhere it cannot dry quickly; the fewer paths it has, the less of that happens, and fresh air then arrives on purpose, filtered and dehumidified. Sub-1.0 ACH50 without stuffy interiors lays out the argument in full.

On ground this wet, the airtightness target is about keeping humid air out of the wall assembly before it ever gets in.

The foundation decision made during site analysis is the moisture strategy's opening move, and the moisture plan builds from it: a crawlspace sealed and conditioned against the ground, or a slab detailed against vapor and held above the seasonal high mark. During construction, a sealed crawlspace is closed in and kept dry through the wet season, since one built damp stays a moisture source for the life of the house. The mechanical design is sized to the load the site presents (damp ground under the house, humid air off the water on both sides), so the equipment runs long enough to pull water out of the air as well as cool it.

New construction in Myrtle Grove means three different starting points.

Waterfront, acreage or infill

New homes in Myrtle Grove take one of three starting points, and new construction here means working out which one applies before a floor plan does. A sound-front or river-adjacent lot starts from the flood elevation and the CAMA shoreline setback the site analysis finds, and the footprint and first-floor height follow from those. Remaining acreage along River Road or one of the older road-frontage stretches carries fewer waterfront rules but the same level ground and the same shallow table, so drainage and foundation choice still lead. An infill lot inside one of the peninsula's subdivisions is usually the most constrained of the three, bounded by a platted setback and, often, an architectural review board layered on top of the county's own.

A lot of record from before 1969 is its own category, and on frontage subdivided long before the county's current standards existed it is a live question. Where a vacant lot was established before October 6, 1969 and does not meet the minimum lot requirements of the district it now sits in, the UDO still contemplates its use as a building site, provided construction holds the district's front, side and rear setbacks and the water and sewage system is approved by county Environmental Health or the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, whichever applies. On a parcel of that vintage it is one of the first questions we put to the county, well before a footprint is drawn.

Renovating the peninsula's subdivision houses

Much of Myrtle Grove's housing stock dates from the 1990s through the 2010s, built to the code and the assumptions current at the time, and a renovation here is often about bringing an existing house's roof, openings and wall assemblies toward current wind and moisture performance. A house built before crawlspace conditioning was routine practice is a frequent candidate: a comfort complaint upstairs often traces to ground moisture rising through an unsealed crawlspace below, so the fix starts with the crawlspace. Where a renovation adds built-upon area, the stormwater arithmetic comes back with it: the county may grant a one-time exemption for 3,000 square feet of added built-upon area where a site is already over the 10,000-square-foot line, or will cross it with the addition, and because it is granted once, a pool, a garage and a wider drive have to fit inside that single 3,000 square feet between them.

A detached ADU on a Myrtle Grove lot

UDO Table 4.4.3 permits a detached accessory dwelling unit by right in the county's residential districts (RA, AR, R-20S, R-20, R-15, R-10, R-7 and R-5), so where a Myrtle Grove lot is zoned residential, the ADU feasibility check is about fit: one off-street parking space for the unit, access off the main house's driveway everywhere except RA, and water and sewer capacity for a second household. Larger platted lots in the peninsula's newer subdivisions and the acreage parcels along River Road usually have the room, and a subdivision's covenants can add limits of their own.

ADUs per lot

One detached accessory dwelling unit per lot.

Where permitted

By right in the residential districts (RA, AR, R-20S, R-20, R-15, R-10, R-7, R-5) and the RMF districts, under UDO Table 4.4.3.

Principal dwelling

Only on a lot with a single-family detached principal dwelling.

Parking & access

One off-street parking space required; in every district except RA, access runs off the driveway that already serves the principal dwelling.

Utilities

Proof of adequate water and sewer capacity from the provider where not covered by a subdivision approval; well-and-septic lots follow county Environmental Health standards.

Monkey Junction holds the peninsula together.

Myrtle Grove is a run of neighborhoods strung along the peninsula between its two waters, each with its own lot pattern and its own relationship to the water table beneath it.

• the River Road corridor along the Cape Fear, with older acreage parcels and, on the far bank, Sunny Point as part of the working river's backdrop
• the Monkey Junction subdivisions, platted lots laid out as the crossroads grew into the area's commercial center
• the Myrtle Grove Sound waterfront, where the CAMA shoreline rules and the flood maps carry the most weight in a site analysis
• Seabreeze, at the sound end of Snow's Cut, founded in 1922 and the peninsula's closest point to Pleasure Island

Monkey Junction is what holds the middle of it together: the groceries, the hardware, the school run, and the turn most people give directions by. Veterans Park and the school campus beside it sit off Carolina Beach Road in the same stretch. Along Myrtle Grove Road the pattern is older and looser: deep road-frontage parcels, some platted long before the county's current lot standards existed, mature canopy over the frontage, and in places a well and septic system where other streets have public water and sewer. The two patterns ask a site analysis different questions. A platted subdivision lot usually knows its utilities and its setbacks and needs its drainage and its foundation worked out; an older frontage parcel may need its lot status, its trees and its water and sewer answered before a footprint is sketched at all.

North of Monkey Junction the peninsula runs into Wilmington proper and a city code on the same flat ground. Further north, on Masonboro Sound, lie Masonboro's wooded, marsh-front lots, under the same county UDO. South across the cut, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach answer to their own municipal codes and to the oceanfront exposure of a barrier island.

Myrtle Grove homes are partner-executed under our direction: we design the home, set the performance targets and direct the vetted trades who build to them. Tropical Tides holds North Carolina Residential Contractor License #109520, belongs to the Brunswick County Home Builders Association, and takes calls at 910-946-5512.