If you cross the Heide Trask Drawbridge on a normal weekday, you already know its rhythms: the wait, the horn, the slow swing of the leaves, the release back into traffic. Starting this fall, that rhythm changes on purpose. Once construction begins on the smaller of the island's three aging bridges, the Heide Trask will open only on the hour, a deliberate throttle NCDOT built into the plan to keep traffic moving while work crews take over the water below.
That single detail tells you something the "great news, it's ahead of schedule" headlines don't: this project just got faster on paper and, for a stretch of about two and a half years, harder to live with on the road. Both things are true. Here is what actually changes, and why the acceleration that sounds like relief is really a compression.
What Changes This Fall
Three bridges connect Wrightsville Beach to the mainland, and all three are being replaced under a single NCDOT contract, Project HB-0040. Utility relocation wrapped in July 2026. What residents will notice next:
- The smaller bridge on West Salisbury Street, which spans Keenan's Creek where it enters Lees Cut, moves into active construction by the end of 2026. It will not close to traffic until after Labor Day.
- Once that work starts, the Heide Trask Drawbridge switches to hourly-only openings to manage traffic flow during the build.
- NCDOT and the town have committed to keeping at least two travel lanes open in each direction throughout construction on all three bridges, and boat traffic will keep moving through the waterway the entire time.
- The Causeway Drive bridge over Banks Channel, the crossing closest to the boutique downtown district, gets built in two stages: a new span goes up north of the current bridge first, traffic shifts onto it, then the old bridge comes down and the second half goes in.
None of that is new information if you have been to a Bridge Replacement Committee meeting. What is new, as of this month, is the timeline underneath it.
Why "Two Years Faster" Is the Headline, Not the Whole Story
For most of 2026, NCDOT's public position was that the three-bridge project would wrap by late 2032, with one bridge finished roughly every two years. On August 14, that changed. NCDOT Division 3 Highway Engineer Trevor Carroll announced the agency will use a Construction Manager/General Contractor delivery method, bringing contractors into the design phase rather than waiting for a finished design to go out to bid. The payoff: all three bridges done in a four-year span instead of six, with a new target completion of spring 2030.
The cost moved too, from an initial estimate near $70 million to a current $105 million, reflecting utilities, property acquisition and construction costs across all three structures.
Carroll was direct about what "faster" actually means for the people driving over these bridges every day.
"There is no such thing as a zero-impact project. We're not trying to say it's a minimal impact. We are trying to build plans to make sure that we mitigate those impacts as much as possible."
Compressing three bridge replacements from six years into four does not remove disruption. It concentrates it. The West Salisbury bridges are expected to be under construction from 2028 to 2030, running at the same time as the final phase of Causeway Drive work, rather than each bridge getting its own dedicated window with breathing room in between.
The Project Two Miles Away
The bridge work is not happening in isolation. Two miles inland, NCDOT's other major regional project, the Military Cutoff and Eastwood Road overpass known as Project U-5710, is scheduled to break ground in fall 2027 and take more than four years, wrapping by the end of 2031. That $81.4 million project will raise Eastwood Road over Military Cutoff to relieve one of the region's most congested intersections, and Eastwood Road is the primary route most people take to reach the bridges in the first place.
Here is the math that matters. The bridge project's new finish line is spring 2030. The overpass starts in fall 2027. That leaves roughly thirty months, from late 2027 to early 2030, where both projects are active at once: one squeezing the road into the island, the other squeezing the road that gets you there.
| Project | What it touches | Starts | Finishes | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wrightsville Beach Bridge Replacement (HB-0040) | Lees Cut, Banks Channel/West Salisbury, Causeway Drive | Fall 2026 | Spring 2030 | $105 million |
| Military Cutoff/Eastwood Overpass (U-5710) | Eastwood Road at Military Cutoff | Fall 2027 | Late 2031 | $81.4 million |
This overlap is not an oversight nobody flagged. Wrightsville Beach Chamber of Commerce President Susan K. Bulluck sent a memo to the Wilmington City Council in March 2025 asking specifically that the overpass be postponed until after the bridge replacements were finished, arguing the project's usefulness had faded in the decade since it was first proposed. Doug Pruden, a resident who has raised concerns about the overpass design, put the lived version of the problem plainly.
"So, you're putting people through that, then getting through the drawbridge, then another delay."
The requested sequencing did not happen. The two projects will run concurrently for close to thirty months, not back to back.
Why the Smallest Bridge Goes First
There is a reason construction starts on the least dramatic of the three bridges rather than the one in the roughest shape. NCDOT's own sufficiency ratings, gathered ahead of the 2024 rebuild proposals, put the West Salisbury bridge over Lees Cut at 81.5 out of 100, the healthiest of the three structures. The Banks Channel bridge connecting Harbor Island to Wrightsville's northern end near the pier scored a 44, the worst of the group.
Starting with the strongest bridge lets NCDOT and its contractor prove out the new delivery method on the lowest-stakes structure before tackling the harder rebuilds. It also means the crossing residents will feel first, this fall and into 2027, is not the one in the worst condition. The bridge most in need of replacement is still ahead, likely folded into the busier 2028-to-2030 window alongside Causeway Drive.
Living With It
None of this is a reason to dread the next four years on the island, but it is a reason to plan around specific dates rather than vague ones. The hourly-only drawbridge openings begin once Lees Cut construction starts this fall, which changes anything timed around a boat trip, a dinner reservation across the bridge, or an early departure for work. The town has hired a public safety consultant specifically to keep fire, police and EMS staged on both sides of the work zone at all times, so emergency access is being treated as its own line item, not an afterthought.
The clearest throughline in NCDOT's public statements is that boat traffic keeps moving and at least two vehicle lanes stay open in each direction through every phase. That is the baseline promise. What changes underneath it, quarter by quarter through 2030, is timing, not access.
By spring 2030, if the accelerated schedule holds, Wrightsville Beach will have three modern bridges built to handle bigger boats and heavier traffic for decades. Getting there means living through a stretch, roughly thirty months long, where two of the region's biggest infrastructure projects are running at the same time rather than in sequence. That is the part worth knowing now, before the first hour-only opening catches you off guard on a Tuesday evening.
For more on what is changing across Wrightsville Beach, Landfall, Figure Eight Island and the greater Wilmington shoreline, or to talk through how any of this touches a property you already own on the island, reach out to Kenyon Realty Group and schedule a private consultation.
