The Dive: Shibumi Supremacy

Just off Access 29 in Wrightsville Beach, Sandra Parker and her sisters hid from the smoldering sun.

Years back, Parker’s husband had injured his head on a broken metal rod from a beach canopy, so when they noticed a new flapping blue fabric in Emerald Isle in 2020, they figured they’d give the Shibumi Shade a try. 

“It’s a lot easier for us old folks,” Parker said. 

Staking a claim of beach real estate on a Saturday in June can be a competitive sport. Parker’s sister, Jennifer Pugh, said the roomy Shibumis can crowd the beach but don’t obstruct views. Shibumi users are more considerate, Pugh said, than “tent people,” who she says are notorious for setting up camp at sunrise and leaving it unattended for large parts of the day. 

“That’s because they’re harder to put up,” Parker chimed in. “This is easier.” 

“I don’t care,” Pugh retorted, defending her disdain for tent people. “They don’t come out in the afternoon until 3.”

A few yards across the hot sand, Ken Wood sat beneath his own cool-toned shade.

Once an umbrella guy, Wood bought his Shibumi a couple of years ago and never looked back. His purchase came with several business cards that he passed out to curious beachgoers who asked about it. “Back then, we went through four or five business cards,” he said. 

Not that anyone would need a card now. Along the North Carolina coastline, Shibumis have become inescapable. On Memorial Day, the Shibumi’s teal and royal emblems rivaled the American flag. If you find yourself on the Carolina coast on July 4, count for yourself to see which wins. 

The home-grown brand has conquered North Carolina beaches and is now on a quest to claim even more territory. Thousands of miles of coastline have yet to be Shibumi-fied. With oomph from an outside investor and a zealous fan base, Shibumi’s next offensive? World domination.

For The Assembly, Johanna F. Still covers the Shibumi boom, and the tense battles broiling over patent rights. 

Shibumi Has Taken Over N.C. Beaches. Next, The World.

The ubiquitous beach shade is on a quest for coastal domination—and isn’t afraid to fight for it.

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The Assembly is taking a two-week publishing break starting July 1. The Dive will be back in your inbox on July 18.

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The Gift That Keeps On Giving

It’s been a tough budget season for local governments. Facing rising costs and inflation, fiscal conservatives have parsed through their finances, looking for fat to trim to avoid—or at least mitigate—tax increases. 

But for Wilmington, one line item can’t be cut—$30,000, listed as “Wrightsville Beach Galleria” under economic incentives. 

In fact, Wilmington will be on the hook for this payment, made to the town of Wrightsville Beach, every year for another decade and a half, part of an ambitious and complicated development deal that hasn’t quite panned out—yet.

Back in 2013, Charlotte developer Jeff Kentner bought the former Galleria mall on Wrightsville Avenue with the hopes of building a major mixed-use development. Kentner influenced several decisions to lay the groundwork, including decommissioning an ABC liquor store and building a new $3 million facility just a quarter-mile down the road. 

Even more complicated was getting the property de-annexed from Wrightsville Beach—which owned the land along with a number of other mainland parcels—and into Wilmington, a process that required local approval and passing a state law. 

This was necessary both because Wrightsville Beach zoning wouldn’t allow the kind of development Kentner had in mind and because, as I’ve heard, the powers that be at Wrightsville didn’t like the idea of a major voting block of mainland residents tilting the outcome of beach elections.

Still, Wrightsville Beach stood to lose out on the property tax revenue if the site was rebuilt as Kentner imagined. To sweeten the deal the city offered to pay nearly $780,000 over 29 years.

As the years went on and Kentner’s project failed to materialize, the deal appeared to sour—as the city’s payments to Wrightsville considerably outweighed the modest tax revenue from 16-some acres of empty lot.

Then, in 2022, South Carolina-based Johnson Development Associates purchased the land and reimagined the project. Kentner made out like a bandit in the deal: State Street scooped up the Galleria in 2013 for $3.76 million, and Johnson Development picked it up for $37.5 million in 2022.

But, even without a single shovel in the ground, the property tax revenue increased threefold—from around $8,000 in 2015 to over $24,000 in 2023.

With a major revaluation coming next year, the property is likely to increase in value again—and that’s before the more than 600 apartment units and 40,000 square feet of retail that Johnson Development has planned actually get built. According to the City of Wilmington, the project is cleared for construction and is expected to break ground this fall.

–Benjamin Schachtman

Catch up on an audio conversation on last week’s edition of The Dive here, or contact us with story ideas and feedback at wilmington@theassemblync.com.

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On an overcast April afternoon, a handful of Gray’s Creek residents cluster around Jamie White’s wooden porch for a debrief. It’s warm and breezy, an ideal spring day for the plants that line the edge of the porch, potted in the bottom halves of large plastic water bottles. 

White has so many of those repurposed planters because she and her neighbors have been drinking bottled water for years. Their wells are contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of nearly 15,000 chemicals better known as PFAS.

“This was supposed to be my forever home,” White said. PFAS, sometimes dubbed “forever chemicals” because of their remarkable persistence in the environment, weren’t part of that vision when she moved here, about 20 minutes south of Fayetteville, in 2008.

White and her neighbors were meeting the day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the country’s first drinking water regulations for PFAS. EPA Administrator Michael Regan, along with local and state elected officials, visited the banks of the Cape Fear River outside a water treatment plant in Fayetteville on April 10, proclaiming a new era for the state’s largest river basin.

“We’re holding polluters accountable,” Regan said.

Not everyone in Gray’s Creek is convinced. “Actions, to me, speak louder than words,” said Vickie Mullins, leaning back into her rocking chair on the porch. 

“That, yesterday, was a joke.”

For The Assembly and co-published with CityView, Maydha Devarajan and Daniel Walton dig into the ongoing PFAS issue.

The Wrong Side of Forever

The state and federal government are getting tougher on so-called forever chemicals. Residents of areas already hit with PFAS contamination think it’s too little, too late—and a new industrial boom is already underway.

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Around the Region

Turtle ‘Takes’: Fourteen sea turtles died after entering Duke Energy’s cooling canal at its nuclear plant in Southport, according to WHQR. The company said the screens on the canal were damaged by high tides.

Vote For Me: New Hanover County Chairman Bill Rivenbark appears to have broken state law by asking constituents to vote for him via his public email address, WECT first reported. Rivenbark has since apologized, according to WHQR.

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Around the State

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