This Outer Banks resort centered the environment from the start, and it paid off
Houses in Rodanthe, NC, are left in the waves at the ocean's edge following the passage of Hurricane Isabel.
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Currituck is the northernmost of the three counties spanning the 200 miles of islands off the coast of North Carolina that make up the Outer Banks. Situated on those stunning sandbars are thousands of homes and vacation rentals - the lifeblood of the tourism industry here. They dwarf the few hotels, and most people rent the same house year after year, sometimes for generations. About 20 percent of the people who visit Corolla, the northernmost town in the Outer Banks, have visited 20 times or more, and 60 percent have visited at least five times, Kugler said.
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The precarious position of these beachfront properties has left some to be and others to face the wrath of . Where they are built also affects the durability of critical sand dunes that protect the shoreline and the amount of safe habitat available for wildlife - like Currituck County's free-roam wild horse population, which has shrunk to only .
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Corolla Light Resort offers one example of a sustainability-focused vacation rental operation. The resort spans the half-mile width of the island it sits on, touching the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Currituck Sound on the other. It hosts 450 privately owned and managed homes, over half of which are dedicated vacation rentals. When the developer, Dick Brindley, started building on the Corolla property in 1985, he was careful to preserve the unique environment that makes the place special, starting with the sand dunes along the ocean.
"The front row houses here in our community are not built right up next to the dune," said Ben Stikeleather, the resort's general manager. "Dune preservation and the open space that existed between the houses and the dune was a very big deal. Because of that, we have seen far less seawater intrusion or damage to property. Our dune structure stayed much healthier."
Brindley also limited the number of stairs built over the dunes for beach access to avoid cutting through them more than necessary. Instead of building a private set of stairs for every home, residents share just five sets across the community, Stikeleather said.
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