Good evening,
I hope this email finds you all well. It has been a busy several weeks in the community and the predictions we made about activity picking up are indeed coming true. Our sales team had twenty tours this week alone and the buyers are evenly split between local residents and people considering relocation to the Wilmington area. Construction is ongoing throughout the community with over thirty homes under construction. If you haven’t been down to the south side of the community you are in for a surprise as the first townhome building in Mariner’s Watch is close to having the roof sheathing put in place. All of the paving in the remainder of Cottage Park has been completed and we are very close to finishing the last storm water feature in that section that will allow us to record the homesites and start selling them. Water and sewer service installation has been completed at the marina and I will be sending out more information about that next week. And I finally get to say that we have the permit in hand for the Pavillion and they started driving pilings for that building today. One of the recent developments we are most excited about is the introduction of a new builder to our Builder Team. Richard Wallace Builder has joined our team and will be starting on two homes (homesites 64 and 65) within the next several weeks. Richard has been in the building business for years and is well known in the Carolina Beach market as well as southern New Hanover County.
Porches Cafe has been reopened and business has been steady, even at fifty percent capacity (in accordance with the Governor’s mandate). We realize that many people may not be ready to go back to “normal” quite yet and wanted to remind everyone that we are still offering carry-out service. If you would like to avoid any contact at all you can simply call, place your order and provide your credit card number and your order will be placed outside the side door of the restaurant, much as we did while were closed. We appreciate the neighborhood’s continued support of Porches for without it, we simply would not be able to continue as it appears it may be some time before we get back to “normal”.
Thank you to all who have been using the pool and doing so in a manner that respects the social distancing and occupancy requirements. We do not anticipate the return of water volleyball anytime soon but rest assured, the River Bluffs staff is anxious to redeem ourselves in the next tournament! The gym remains closed and likely will be for some time given the Governor’s mandate. One of the many benefits of living in this community is the ability to walk for miles in order to get exercise. We will continue to monitor the Governor’s position on opening gyms and will keep you posted. The Resident Advisory Committee met via Zoom yesterday and we agreed to meet as soon as we get more news from the Governor. Notes from that meeting have been posted on the portal for you to review. One of the other items discussed was the ARC guidelines we have in place in the community and CEPCO will be sending out a reminder to all residents about the guidelines and what is permitted and not permitted in terms of exterior improvements to your property. If ever in doubt, ARC applications are available on both the River Bluffs portal and the CEPCO portal.
Neighborhood Safety
One of the topics we discussed during the Resident Advisory Committee meeting was speeding. I’m sure your as tired of hearing about it as I am of talking about it. If I said what I really thought about it, many of you would be offended but I will say; I just don’t get it. This is a neighborhood. There are people walking, there are children, there is wildlife, there is construction traffic and golf cart traffic. The speed limit within the community is 15 MPH and on Chair Road it is 35 MPH until you get to the farm and thereafter it is 45 MPH. We are going to be more aggressive in calling out those who are speeding and will be sending letters when the offender is known. Monday morning I came to work and got a report of a resident being passed by two vehicles while they were leaving the community, at 35 MPH. In that particular case, because we knew the time of the incident and had a description of the vehicle, we were able to identify that the culprits were two construction vendors. One will likely no longer be working in the community and the other has been advise that their company will be banned if such idiocy continues. Today (although it happens most days) the newspaper delivery carrier decided that they would complete their deliveries in record time and after a conversation with the Director of Circulation for the Star News we think that problem will be corrected. Bottom line, if we know about it we are happy to get involved to slow people down. No one is immune from this. Today one of our staff went the wrong way on a one way road in a golf cart and I got an email within seconds of it happening. That won’t happen again. Thank you for your help with this. At the end of the day it’s up to all of us to keep the neighborhood safe.
While not necessarily related to neighborhood safety, we do have some new residents in the community. You may have seen the young fawns hanging around Rosewood Landing. They were born just a few days ago and have been spotted curled up sleeping alongside several of the houses in the community. We were concerned that in several instances the mother was not with the young fawns but Sharon in our office did some research and learned that early on in their lives, the mother doesn’t hang around the fawns during the day as the youngsters have not yet developed a scent and that is a way of the mother keeping them safe as she has a scent. Once they are a little older the fawns will stay with their mother for up to two years. Please be sure to keep an eye out for these new residents (and there will be more I’m sure) and give them plenty of room.
With all that is going on in the world right now, I like to look at this community as an oasis away from reality. It is strengthened by the active involvement of each of you and its future is very bright indeed. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to a great summer. Have a wonderful weekend and don’t forget your Dad on Father’s Day!
John Lennon