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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Demolition of oldest house on Wrightsville Beach likely this week

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The new owners of the oldest house on Wrightsville Beach have filed for a permit to demolish the building, according to an email sent Friday to town officials by Wrightsville Beach Town Manager Tim Owens.

The email did not specify a timeline for the permitting process or when demolition would be scheduled to begin. But a sign in front of the property at 217 S. Lumina Ave. said the comment period closed on Feb. 18 and a real estate broker representing the new landowners said he the demolition would occur this week.

Known by some locals as the “Bluethenthal House” from its former owner, the structure was first built in 1898. It was placed on the market in June 2015 for the first time since it was purchased by  Herbert Bluethenthal sometime after it was constructed. The house is not

At a price of $3.5 million, the September purchase was the largest home sale in Wrightsville Beach in 2015. However, the two lots on which the house sits is considered to be much more valuable than the structure, which real estate experts estimating it to be about $500,000, giving the property a value of about $3 million.

After the sale, a sign in front of the property indicated that duplexes would be constructed on the lots, but Intracoastal Realty real estate broker Mark Bodford said the owners will now try to sell each lot separately for the purpose of building single-family homes on the lot.

Bodford said that the house’s original owner had offered to donate it to a historical group, but that the cost of moving it was too prohibitive, citing estimates that it could cost up to $500,000 to relocate the structure.

“They tried to give the home to the museum or to the town, but it was really expensive to move it,” Bodford said.

Bodford said the lots were ideal for single family homes, noting that each lot could hold up to 5,000 square foot homes. He said the lots were purchased by a pair of investors.

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