The Outer Banks Voice - Plan calls for Waterfront Shops in Duck to expand southward

Plan calls for Waterfront Shops in Duck to expand southward

By Michelle Wagner on November 16, 2014

Four shops would be added on the south side. (Dare County GIS)

A plan to expand the Waterfront Shops in Duck has received the blessing of town planners and will next go before Town Council.

The popular downtown shopping center along the Currituck Sound is home to the Blue Point restaurant and more than a dozen shops, including North Beach Outfitters and Donna Designs.

Owner Jim Braithwaite of Allis Holdings LLC is proposing three modest shops and one smaller one to be constructed along the western side of the pond on the southern portion of the complex.

If approved, the 3,840 square feet of elevated retail space will be erected on about one-third of an acre of wetlands slated to be filled under a Coastal Area Management Act permit.

Duck Planning Director Joe Heard said that a new access drive off of Duck Road along with a 24-space parking lot would be built to the south of Stan White Realty to accommodate the additional retail shops.

Meanwhile, the existing access drive on the Stan White Realty property will be eliminated, according to the plans. The new access drive will be about 90 feet to the south.

An elevated wooden walkway would extend from the proposed buildings across the pond and to Duck’s Cottage Coffee & Books, as well as to the existing shopping center to the west. Developers also propose a pergola on the walkway near the center of the pond.

First constructed in 1986, the Waterfront Shops now include quaint stores along the boardwalk on the Currituck Sound. Along with the upscale Blue Point, it is also home to Coastal Cantina, Barr-ee Station and Sea Dragon Gallery.

The 6 acres of land wrap around the Stan White Realty property as well as three sides of Tommy’s Market farther to the north. It falls in the town’s Village Commercial zone.

To the south, it abuts the Dare County water tower.

Heard said the town’s Planning Board was pleased with the design during Wednesday’s meeting. The next step, he said, is for public hearing will be set at council’s Dec. 3 meeting.

The Red Drumb are Running

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Call from sons wasn't new; fishing in a kayak was

Virginia Beach's Larry Lusk with a big red drum caught off the Outer Banks while kayak fishing
By Lee Tolliver

The Virginian-Pilot
© November 9, 2014

Larry Lusk has enough respect for his sons' fishing knowledge to come running when the pair tells him to.

A call last week had him on the road south to the northern Outer Banks to team up with his boys for some red drum action.

But when he saw that they were taking him drumming on kayaks, he was a little apprehensive.

"My kayak experience is pretty limited," said the 55-year-old Rudee Inlet resident. "Only one other time basically. It's amazing how much that side of fishing has grown. When I moved to the inlet 12 years ago there wasn't but a few people doing it. The last couple of years there have been more than ever.

"It's pretty exciting and I'd do it again."

It didn't hurt his confidence that his sons - Matt and David - had put him in the middle of a school of very cooperative big red rum.

Fishing about a half-mile off the beach, the trio caught and released nearly 10 in a short time frame.

"It was pretty easy pickings to tell you the truth," Lusk said. "When they are balled up and working bait they make it easy on you."

The guys were throwing bucktails with no plastics that resulted in jarring strikes and the experience of being towed through the water by fish that averaged "about 35 to 40 pounds."

"They'd tow us around about 35, 40... maybe 50 yards," Lusk said. "It's definitely a thrill when you get hooked up."

David Lusk is a good reason the trip turned out so well. He's an inshore and light-tackle guide on the Outer Banks - saltminded.com- and in the fall he drives the beach looking for birds working over a school of bait. When he finds a flock, he parks the truck several hundred yards south of the action, employs the kayak and works his way to the fish.

"He usually can stay with them for a while," Dad said. "But if they move too far away from the anglers, he paddles back to the beach, puts the kayaks back in the truck and drives after them.

"It's a pretty neat way to stay with the school."

Matt Lusk, a professional photographer - mattluskphotography.com - usually is on hand to document the action.

"Yeah, I caught some nice drum, but they deserve all the credit," Dad said. "I just drove down and jumped on a kayak and made a few casts.

"The boys made it really easy for me."

Things definitely are easier for Lusk these days. After nearly 38 years as general manager of J. Henry Holland, a Virginia Beach company that makes crane cables and wire rope assemblies, he has struck a deal to work part time so he can return to fishing endeavors that once dominated his life.

"I'm gonna go get my captain's license and start doing a few seasonal charters out of Rudee," he said. "And I want to get back into the (largemouth) bass tournament scene.

I'm really looking forward to that."

That and another phone call from his boys about the next big bite.

Lee Tolliver, 757-222-5844, lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com

Twitter @LeeTolliver

Posted to: Off the Hook Outdoors Sports

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We could not be more excited to continue enjoying all Kill Devil Hills and the
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Outer Banks Seafood Festival is 10/18 and Sharon Peele Kennedy will Present a Cooking Demo

Featured Story by The Outer Banks Voice-

Sharon Peele Kennedy: Art of cooking Outer Banks Catch

By Submitted Story on September 30, 2014

By Susan West

Sharon Peele Kennedy will tell you that she grew up with a spatula, not a baby rattle, in her hand.

Kennedy was born into a family with a rich culinary heritage that combined her father’s traditional Hatteras Island–style cooking with her mother’s readiness to add the unexpected.

“My father could stew a nickel and make it taste good,” the Buxton resident says. Her father used only basic ingredients — potatoes, onions, salt pork, flour, salt, pepper — in dishes like stewed shrimp with piebread dumplings.

Her mother cooked with a variety of spices and herbs, like the ones found in New York City where she lived as a child until the Great Depression set in and her father brought the family to Hatteras Island.

Kennedy’s favorite childhood meal was her mother’s baked fish, usually a large red drum or bluefish, layered with potatoes and onions. Other favorites were clam chowder, fried spot, roasted oysters, and shad roe with scrambled eggs.

She wasn’t introduced to the flavors of offshore species until she began her restaurant career.

“Fish like grouper and triggerfish taste very good, but the offshore species don’t have the distinctive depth of flavor like the inshore species that I still prefer to this day,” Kennedy says.

Her restaurant career started with a job bussing tables at a Hatteras village restaurant when she was 12 years old. Later she waitressed, but it wasn’t until she tried her hand in the kitchen that she knew she had found her food-service niche.

“The kitchen was where I wanted to be,” she says. “It was the place where I felt I could create art.”

Kennedy credits her culinary education to the women she worked with in Hatteras Island kitchens in the 1960s and 1970s, before pre-prepared foods became popular.

“I was blessed to have learned from the best,” she says. “Those women were all self-taught and knew how to make the most out of every ingredient.”

Kennedy continues to cook in a local restaurant and also hosts a local radio program on Beach 104.1 called “What’s for Supper with Sharon Peele Kennedy,” which features easy-to-prepare seafood recipes. Now in its sixth year, the program developed after a chance conversation about the flavor of soft-shell sand fleas with a radio station employee.

“The program is about as cornbread and country-fed as you can get because that’s how I am,” Kennedy says with a laugh.

Kennedy cautions consumers to avoid over-cooking and over-seasoning seafood.

“Seafood should be done simply,” she advises. “Don’t mask the flavor of premium seafood with sauces. Kick up your sides instead.”

No one type of fish is her favorite, but Pamlico Sound bay scallops clearly hold special status with Kennedy.

“The taste is very sweet and salty, especially when eaten raw,” she says.

---

Kennedy serves on the boards of Outer Banks Catch and N.C. Catch, two consumer education initiatives that promote local seafood, and she often presents seafood-cooking demonstrations in locations from the Outer Banks to Raleigh.

She will present a seafood-cooking demonstration in the Outer Banks Catch tent at the Outer Banks Seafood Festival on Oct. 18.

Traffic Study on the Outer Banks!

News

NCDOT looking into Outer Banks travel issues

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by Philip Townsend, 13News Now

WVEC.com

Posted on September 1, 2014 at 4:58 PM

Updated yesterday at 11:01 PM

DARE COUNTY---The North Carolina Department of Transportation is studying how bad traffic is near the Outer Banks.

The research follows numerous complaints from drivers that congestion has increased during the summer months this year.

"You get a backup there every time you stop to make a left turn," said driver Robert Aldreige.

Aldreige is referring to the intersection of Highways 12 and 158 heading towards Corolla.

It's a common trouble area for traffic backups.

"My experience is that I've sat in traffic a lot there," added holiday traveler Rick Taylor.

This fall, commissioners in Dare and Currituck counties will get an update from NCDOT.

After Labor Day officials will start analyzing the amount of traffic, the time it happens and the number of accidents near the Outer Banks.

Money for major projects likely won't materialize, but smaller changes like increased signage and traffic light adjustments could make the problem better.

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Duck Replenishment Article in Outer Banks Voice

Duck given legal tool for access during beach nourishment

By Sam Walker on July 30, 2014

Erosion was evident today from the Corps of Engineers pier.

The Town of Duck can now use eminent domain powers during its future beach nourishment project to allow work on areas considered private property.

A bill finally passed the General Assembly last week allowing Duck to join other towns with the legal alternative if a property owner fails to give written permission to pump sand onto the beach.

Generally, private property extends to mean high water, or the wet sand beach. When Nags Head widened its beach, it received easements from most owners.

Duck is joining Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills in planning a beach nourishment project.

Town leaders are considering a plan for a 20-foot-high and 20-foot wide dune line with a berm width of 60 to 80 feet along 2.5 miles of beach.

That plan would need about 1,050,000 cubic yards of sand.

Coastal Planning and Engineering is leading the project, which is scheduled to start in 2016 in conjunction with those planned in Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills.

The Duck project would cost $14.4 million, Kitty Hawk’s, $16.5 million, and Kill Devil Hill’s, $10.9 million, according to early estimates.

Dare County’s Shoreline Management Fund would provide much of the funding with the rest coming from property taxes and municipal service levies in each of the towns.