Ask anyone who walks the Loop every morning what worries them about the bridge project, and they will tell you about Causeway Drive. That is the bridge everyone pictures: the one that carries traffic and foot traffic alike onto the island, the one every Loop walker crosses to close the circuit back toward town center. It is a reasonable assumption. It is also not where construction starts.
The first bridge to come down this year is the short one that most Loop regulars barely register as a bridge at all: the West Salisbury Street span over Lees Cut, tucked between Lookout Harbour and the eastern edge of Pelican Drive. It carries far less foot traffic than the Causeway crossing, and it is where the North Carolina Department of Transportation is putting its first shovels in the ground this fall. If your mental image of the next few years involves the Loop's busiest bridge closing to pedestrians any day now, the actual sequence buys you more time than you thought.
The bridge that starts first isn't the one you cross to reach the sand
The full project, listed with NCDOT as Project HB-0040, replaces three aging structures built in the 1960s and 70s: the Causeway Drive Bridge over Banks Channel, and two bridges on West Salisbury Street crossing Lees Cut and Banks Channel. Balfour Beatty was awarded the contract in January after a bid process that closed the previous September, and the Town of Wrightsville Beach's project page has been tracking the milestones since.
Phase one targets the Lees Cut bridge, with construction starting late this year and running roughly a year. During that stretch, West Salisbury Street closes between Lookout Harbour and Pelican Drive, but the Causeway Drive Bridge, the one most Loop walkers actually use, stays open to both vehicles and pedestrians, multiuse path included. The town has also said it plans to stand up temporary pedestrian "mini loops" once the closure takes effect, giving walkers and runners an alternate route around the work zone rather than forcing a detour off the island entirely.
The one daily-life detail that changes for everyone, not just Loop walkers, is the Heide Trask Drawbridge. Once fall construction begins, it will open only on the hour to manage traffic flow through the work zone. If you are on the water regularly, that hourly rhythm is worth building into your routine now rather than learning it the hard way in October.
The four-year math, mapped
The project's timeline has moved since spring, and it moved in the direction residents actually wanted. Here is where each phase stands as of this August.
| Bridge | Phase | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| West Salisbury St. over Lees Cut | Phase one | Construction starts late 2026, about one year |
| West Salisbury St. over Banks Channel | Phase two | Construction starts summer 2027 |
| Causeway Drive over Banks Channel | Phase three, built in two halves | 2028 through spring 2030 |
The whole project was originally projected to wrap in 2032. In June, the North Carolina General Assembly authorized NCDOT to deliver up to fifteen projects statewide through a construction manager/general contractor arrangement instead of traditional bidding, and Wrightsville Beach's bridges made the list. The practical effect, according to reporting this month, is a finish line now targeted for spring 2030, two years earlier than the original estimate. The total cost has also climbed, from an initial $70 million estimate to $105 million, which is the tradeoff for compressing four years of work that was once spread across six.
None of that changes what you will notice this fall on the Loop itself. It changes how long you will be noticing it.
The one tradition that already left the island
Not every disruption is hypothetical. The Cape Fear Habitat for Humanity Turkey Trot, a Thanksgiving morning 5K and one-mile race that has run on Wrightsville Beach for 21 years, is relocating this November to the Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park in downtown Wilmington. Organizers cited two reasons: the race has grown past what the island can comfortably host, with registration capped at more than 3,000 runners, and the anticipated road closures made race-day logistics on the island increasingly difficult to plan around. The event will stay downtown for the duration of construction, expected to run four to five years, with free parking downtown on Thanksgiving Day and proceeds still funding Habitat's affordable housing builds.
If you have laced up for the Turkey Trot every year on the Loop, this is the one change on this list that is already final rather than pending.
What still opens the same as always
Everything else that gives the Loop its daily rhythm is running on its normal 2026 schedule. The Wrightsville Beach Farmers' Market set up on the softball field between Seawater Lane and Salisbury Street back on May 4, and it continues every Monday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. through December 7, right along the Loop's interior stretch near the Museum of History.
Speaking of which: the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History, housed in the century-old Myers Cottage at 303 West Salisbury Street, keeps its regular hours and rotating exhibits this fall, with free admission as always. It is also the anchor for two of the island's longer-running traditions, Lumina Daze and the Jingle Bell 5K Run and Walk, both of which draw from the same Loop-walking community that will be navigating the Lees Cut detour later this year. Harbor Way Gardens, the small arboretum tucked near the Causeway and Salisbury Street intersection, is likewise untouched by phase one work and remains the shaded rest stop it has always been mid-Loop.
The Loop you get back is wider than the one you have now
It is easy to read a multi-year construction project as pure subtraction. The design specifications tell a different story. None of the three replacement bridges add new car lanes, but all three widen the pedestrian and cyclist space considerably: multiuse paths grow to 10 to 12 feet, new 6-foot bike lanes run along both sides, and concrete parapet walls physically separate that space from vehicle traffic. The rebuilt Causeway Drive Bridge, when it opens around 2030, will carry four 11-foot travel lanes split two and two, flanked by those wider paths and bike lanes on both edges.
In practice, that means the Loop you are worried about losing this fall is being rebuilt into something roomier than what generations of Wrightsville Beach walkers have shared with car traffic for sixty years. The disruption is real. It is also temporary, shorter than originally planned, and pointed at an upgrade rather than a downgrade.
For this fall specifically, the changes worth building into your routine are narrow: expect the Heide Trask Drawbridge to open on the hour once construction starts, expect detour signage near Lees Cut on West Salisbury Street, and expect the Farmers' Market, the Museum, and the Causeway crossing itself to run exactly as they have all year. If you are training for a Thanksgiving race out of habit, know that this year it starts downtown, not on the island.
None of this is the kind of news that shows up on a listing sheet, but it is the kind of thing that shapes how a Wrightsville Beach fall actually feels for the people who live here. If you are ever curious what a home on or near the Loop is worth while all of this plays out, or you just want a second opinion from a team that tracks this island closely, Tory Kuehner Group is a quick email away.