CAROLINA BEACH — After more than a year of plan revisions and community meetings, Harmony Hospitality’s hotel planned for Carolina Beach received conditional zoning approval Wednesday.
Carolina Beach Town Council gave the greenlight to SpringHill Suites in a unanimous vote. This followed the planning board’s unanimous approval last month as well.
READ MORE: 140-room hotel cleared by Carolina Beach planning board, council votes in November
ALSO: CB Embassy Suites set for traffic analysis approval, opposed petition reaches 1,500 signatures
Harmony Hospitality presented its new hotel and event space, to include 140 rooms and stand 73 feet tall. It will be built on Carolina Beach Avenue North where the old SeaWitchCafe and Tiki Bar was located. The tiki bar and restaurant will be rebuilt across the street, as will an event space and parking lot underneath, both to be oceanside and connected to the hotel by a skywalk bridge.
Because of its height surpassing the 50-foot limit in the Central Business District, Harmony Hospitality needed a conditional zoning permit for the hotel to be built.
The hotel will be 67 feet tall, with the exit staircase bringing the height to 73 feet. The beachfront dining and event pavilion will reach 39 feet.
Virginia-based Harmony Hospitality originally proposed a 100-foot Embassy Suites last year — it also owns the downtown Embassy — but received a lot of pushback from the community. After hosting multiple community meetings and doing a survey, developers amended their plans.
“I do wanna thank you guys for listening to the public and bringing something that will bring actual value to our town,” Mayor Pro Tem Deb LeCompte said at the meeting. “I think because you listened, you will partner with our community.”
LeCompte and council member Mike Hoffer were vehemently against the original 100-foot proposal, though their colleague, Jay Healy, was for it.
“Everybody knows I wanted the 100-foot hotel,” Healy said. “There’s no secret about that. As a town, I think we made a mistake not going with the 100-foot hotel because it’s the only chance we have in the next 50 years to do something like this. It would’ve been magnificent.”
However, Healy was content with the current plan calling it a “game changer.”
In addition to event spaces, hotel and dining areas, there will be parking underneath the lofted beachfront pavilion and in a surface lot, with 164 spaces in total.
“I am glad to hear we have more event space than the [Embassy Suites] in Wilmington,” Healy said, surmising it could foster more people coming to Carolina Beach during the shoulder season to host conventions, weddings and the like. “It’s all about our businesses surviving in that four-month time.”
The hotel is set to generate increased tax revenue for the town, bringing jobs and hosting visitors who will shop at local businesses, dine at restaurants, and such. Carolina Beach businessman Ed Thomas, who owns Gulfstream Restaurant, spoke positively about the development, as well as the company’s conversations with locals.
“One thing that people don’t realize is that things are gonna grow and things are gonna improve,” Thomas said. “This is a project I think the city has needed for a long, long time … Bringing business into the city in the wintertime helps every business.”
Mayor Lynn Barbee agreed and said hotels were always meant to be built near the boardwalk in the CBD.
“The key to rebuilding the Central Business District is foot traffic, foot traffic, foot traffic,” Barbee said. “And this project will do that.”
Developers plan to install flashing lights for the crosswalk at Pelican Lane, also set to be paved, to ensure pedestrian safety. They also will bury the electrical lines, plant 13 trees, and install lighting angled downward for vehicular safety.
There will be two loading zones and a 5-foot sidewalk along the property. Though no new traffic impact analysis was provided at either the planning board or council meeting, the daily traffic will fall under the 1,495 daily trips originally projected with the Embassy Suites proposal, according to the developers.
Wednesday’s presentation wasn’t met with much opposition or criticism, though one resident, Patrick Christy, was concerned about traffic bottlenecking, given Canal Drive’s frequent floods shutting down the street.
“If there’s an emergency vehicle that needs to get through, I’m worried that the lane is too tight,” Christy said. “I don’t mind the hotel, but I’d like to know if we can have another entrance point.”
Councilman Hoffer sympathized with his uneasiness. Also concerned about traffic and overcrowding, Hoffer called the current plan more ideal than the Embassy Suites.
“[The developers] bought a big piece of property. If they bought half of this property and were coming in with a little boutique-y hotel with 60 rooms, there wouldn’t be much controversy about it,” Hoffer said. “Then a couple years down the road, somebody else’ll come and buy the other half of the property and wanna do the same thing. We’d be in the same place. Except you wouldn’t get the amount of improvements you see when one developer comes in at one time and does it.”
Developers still have to receive a CAMA permit and all remaining federal, state and local permits before breaking ground. Construction of the hotel is set to begin at the end of summer 2026, but developers expect to break ground on the pavilion by February.
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