Ask anyone who walks, runs, or bikes the Loop on a summer evening what they think about the water crossings, and you'll get the same complaint: the sidewalk narrows right where the traffic doesn't. Cars queue for the causeway, a runner ducks toward the rail, a stroller waits for a gap. It's been that way for as long as most residents can remember, because the bridges carrying Causeway Drive and Salisbury Street over Banks Channel were built in the 1960s and 70s and were never really designed with a 2.5-mile pedestrian loop in mind.
That's about to change, and not on the timeline anyone expected. The North Carolina Department of Transportation has fast-tracked its three-bridge replacement project by two years, and the design specs quietly solve the exact problem locals have been navigating around for decades. This isn't just a story about traffic cones. It's a story about what the Loop is going to feel like in 2030, and why residents should understand it now, while it's still blueprints and utility poles.
Two Bridges, One Loop
The John Nesbitt Loop, named for the town's Director of Public Works from 1979 to 1999 who built it in 1992 by reallocating unused town funds rather than waiting on a dedicated budget, has always depended on the same two water crossings to complete its circuit: the span carrying Causeway Drive over the south end of Banks Channel, and the span carrying Salisbury Street over the channel's north side. Those two bridges aren't just part of the Loop. They're the reason it works as a loop at all, connecting the beachside stretch along North Lumina Avenue back to the mainland-facing side near the Municipal Complex, Harbor Way Gardens, and the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History.
Both of those spans are now on NCDOT's list to be torn down and rebuilt. So is a third bridge, on Salisbury Street where it crosses Lee's Cut just west of the Loop's usual route. All three date to a period when a bridge deck was built to move cars, not to double as a shared path for dog walkers and bike commuters.
What the State Actually Approved
The project has grown since it was first floated. NCDOT's early estimate put the cost at $70 million. The current figure, according to reporting from Port City Daily this week, sits at $105 million. That's the kind of number that means something only against its baseline, and here the baseline tells you the scope changed, not just the price of concrete.
What changed more than the budget is the calendar. The original plan called for building one bridge every two years, wrapping the full project by 2032. NCDOT now expects to finish all three by spring 2030, compressing the work into a four-year span instead of six. Division 3 Highway Engineer Trevor Carroll was careful about how firm that promise is. "What I'm sharing with you today is our projection," he told the town. "It's our target." Part of what makes the target credible is a procedural change: in June, the North Carolina General Assembly authorized NCDOT to use a construction manager and general contractor delivery method on a slate of projects, skipping the traditional bid process that usually stretches timelines.
The construction sequence matters for anyone planning around it. Utility relocation already happened this summer, with crews moving power poles near the West Salisbury Street bridge over Lee's Cut starting July 20 and wrapping by mid-August. The Salisbury Street bridges will stay open to traffic while their replacements are built alongside them, a phase expected to run from 2028 to 2030. The Causeway Drive bridge will take longer, since crews first have to build a new section, shift traffic onto it, then demolish the old bridge before connecting the final pieces.
The part worth circling on your calendar isn't the demolition. It's the new deck. Each rebuilt bridge will carry four 11-foot travel lanes, two in each direction, a six-foot bike lane on both sides, and a 12-foot multi-use path separated from vehicle and bike traffic by a concrete parapet wall. For a Loop that currently squeezes joggers and cyclists onto the same narrow shoulder as summer traffic, that's a meaningful upgrade to the two water crossings that make the route possible in the first place.
If you've noticed detour signs on Pelican Drive this month, that's a related but separate project. CFPUA began excavating a wastewater pipeline there in early August, in the same stretch along Lee's Cut and Channel Walk that saw utility work for the bridge project the month before, pushing the street's repaving to a new target completion of August 15.
The Island Wasn't Waiting Around
None of this construction has slowed down the parts of island life that don't involve asphalt. If anything, the last few months brought more turnover on the food side than usual.
- Shark Bar & Kitchen, the seafood spot steps from Johnnie Mercers Pier that founders Alan and Jennifer Giaquinto opened in 2017, added a second-floor sushi bar this year called Red Cat Sushi, run by chef-partner Louie Sipler. It opens daily at 3 p.m. with half-off sushi until 5, prices on the full menu running from $14 to $32. Sipler has said the appeal was partly technical, calling sushi "an art form" that sharpened his skills, and partly local: he wanted a place to showcase the fish purveyors already supplying Wrightsville Beach's restaurants. The name comes from Jen Giaquinto's cat, whose portrait now hangs behind the bar.
- A Caribbean-style restaurant called Cabana Bar and Grill is opening in the former Waterman's Brewing space near the beach, owner Clayton Gsell building the menu around island-inspired dishes and tropical drinks.
- The town's long-running Concerts in the Park series, traditionally a dry event, sold alcohol for the first time this season. The Board of Aldermen approved the change after Town Manager Haynes Brigman researched it following a March budget workshop, bringing in Lighthouse Beer and Wine as the vendor and charging $8 per drink ticket across all eight shows, from NO Regretz on June 11 through Port City Shakedown's rain-date finale on August 6. Mayor Ken Dull described the town's approach plainly: "We are walking in through the shallow end of this."
- Market in the Park keeps its Thursday morning slot, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., running through late September, a steady fixture for anyone who wants produce and local goods without the causeway traffic of a weekend.
- The Wrightsville Beach Museum of History's annual tradition of lining the Loop with 25 sponsored historic plaques continues to draw attention from regulars on their daily laps. Executive Director Madeline Flagler has called it one of the museum's most popular offerings, noting that walkers regularly stop to tell staff the signs are their favorite part of the route.
Same Island, Wider Shoulders
Put those two threads next to each other and a pattern shows up that's easy to miss if you only read the headlines separately. The town spent this year loosening a 40-year-old rule about beer at a free concert, while the state spent it compressing a bridge timeline by two years and widening the exact crossings residents use every day. Neither decision waited for the other. Both point toward an island that's willing to move faster than its reputation suggests, on infrastructure and on tradition alike.
For anyone who's logged years of laps around the Loop, the next four years will mean living around construction fencing near two of its busiest points. But the other side of that fencing is a version of the same route with a dedicated, physically separated path over water it currently has to share with cars. That's worth knowing before the detours start, not after.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a property near the Loop, the causeway, or the north end of the island, Will Musselwhite has spent his career reading Wilmington-area development plans the way most people read weather forecasts. Let's Connect.
