• S H O R T S H O R T S
Wrightsville Yacht Club will build the area’s first floating restaurant
Dining on the Water
By AMANDA LISK | Rendering by KERSTING ARCHITECTURE
A
KERSTING Architecture-designed restaurant that will
float on the Intracoastal Waterway is coming
to Wrightsville Beach Marina in the summer of
2022.
Wrightsville Yacht Club is the parent com-pany
of Wrightsville Beach Marina. The 6,000-square foot,
state-of-the-art facility, to be built by Monteith Construction, is
designed to seat 150. Once complete, this floating restaurant,
bar and terrace is expected to put Wrightsville Beach on the
map like never before.
“We are a major stopping point as the fleets move from
the southern locations up to New England,” says Sam Clary,
Wrightsville Beach Marina and Yacht Club manager. “They’re stay-ing
in larger and larger amounts of time as our area has grown.
These types of amenities are common in the more metropolitan
areas, so we wanted to follow suit.”
The vision was Clary’s, who started working at the marina
as a dockhand in 1987 while attending the University of North
Carolina Wilmington.
“We wanted to do something that has a real wow factor and be
completely unique and an opportunity to give someone an expe-rience
they will never forget,” Clary says.
Michael Ross Kersting is an award-winning and nationally
acclaimed architect behind some of the coast’s most luxurious,
innovative modern designs. With this project, he takes it to a
whole new level.
“We quickly realized we’re not designing a boat and we’re really
not designing a building. It’s this unique hybrid where it’s floating
among the yachts, yet attached to the landscape,” says Kersting
who opted for floor-to-ceiling glass walls to optimize the view.
“We’re getting away from load bearing walls and building more of
a glass-and-steel type structure with steel columns and steel sup-
Wrightsville Yacht Club’s new restaurant will float on the Intracoastal Waterway, between the docks at Wells Marine Insurance and
Riggs Yacht Sales, just northeast of Bluewater Grill. Floor-to-ceiling windows will provide unobstructed views to the water from the
dining area and bar.
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WBM november 2020