The communities along the Delaware Bay and inland are becoming a refuge for people as well as wildlife.
By JANE BROOKS
Staff reporter Copyright © 2001 , The News Journal.
(The article here is reprinted in it's entirety for educational purposes only; a permitted use of copyrighted material.)

As Rehoboth Beach outgrows its biblical name meaning "room for more" -- and prices for oceanfront real estate soar past a million dollars an acre -- beach development is pushing north to the rustic settlements along Delaware Bay.

Broadkill Beach, for instance, once little more than a string of fishing shanties, is taking on a new look with upscale developments on either end. The trailers and cottages in between are gradually being replaced by more substantial year-round dwellings.

And as building lots become both expensive and scarce in the traditional ocean resorts of Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany and Lewes, growth also is turning inland around towns such as Milton, Millsboro, Long Neck, Oak Orchard, Angola and Ocean View as Sussex County experiences a building boom "bigger than the 1980s," according to Frank B. Calio, the county's director of economic development. Building permits for new single-family homes rose from 1,088 in 1993 to 1,357 last year. "Anything overlooking water carries a high premium," he said.

Driving the boom is a combination of low interest rates, a strong economy and high consumer confidence. "We are seeing a lot of people divesting from the stock market and putting money into real estate," said real estate agent Amy Schrader of Jack Lingo Inc. "It's the old law of supply and demand."

As a result, some oceanfront values have doubled in just a year. An acre in Rehoboth Beach that sold for $750,000 last summer, for instance, is now priced at $1.5 million. A new waterfront subdivision at Bethany Beach is selling briskly at $1.7 million an acre.

By comparison, $135,000 for a good-sized lot on Broadkill Beach -- where horseshoe crabs and shorebirds far outnumber human visitors -- seems a bargain.

It's about five miles, as the sea gull flies, up the bay from Lewes, and about 15 miles by winding road through farms and the pristine Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge to the bayside community. And it's increasingly attracting well-off buyers.

Full-acre lots in exclusive Back Bay Cove on the north end of Broadkill Beach are going for $250,000. A similar lot at Rehoboth would be priced "well over $1 million, if you could find one," said real estate agent Lee Ann Wilkinson of Prudential Gallo Realty.

Half-acre sites in the 48-lot bayside portion of the development are selling for $135,000. Single-family homes being built there start at about $350,000.

RETIREMENT HAVEN


It's a far cry from 1973 when General Motors Corp. worker Benito Cautillo of Wilmington paid $6,000 for a piece of land just down the street from the Broadkill Store near the center of things and parked a trailer to serve as his weekend getaway.

The store, which opened in the 1950s, remains the community's only business.

Attracted by "the peace and quiet, fishing and crabbing," Cautillo has come to think of Broadkill as his second home. He had the aging trailer hauled away this year. It's being replaced by a modern all-cedar house on pilings.

"It should be beautiful -- it's something I've saved for my whole life," said Cautillo, who plans to spend even more time on the bay now that he has retired.

He and his neighbors have watched development moving north over the last several years. But they're not concerned about Broadkill becoming another overbuilt resort. "They can only do so much - we're locked in by the wildlife refuge," he said.

Indeed, Broadkill Beach is not likely to grow much beyond the 600 to 650 properties already laid out along the bay, said real estate agent Harry Wooding, who has made the beach his home for the last 10 years.

"When we first moved to Broadkill in 1988, people said we were crazy to live so far out of the way," he recalled. "Every year it seems not as far as it used to be."

Wooding, his wife Kim and two sons, aged 6 and 8, are among about 75 families who live year-round on Broadkill. It's still convenient to the attractions at Lewes and Rehoboth, Wooding said, "But up here in the middle of July it is so quiet, it is like two different worlds."

His children love being able to walk across the street to the beach to fish or go swimming, he said, and they don't mind the nine-mile trip to school in Milton, also the closest shopping center for the family.

When Wooding moved to Broadkill, lots were going for $45,000 to $50,000. A nearby lot sold recently for $155,000.

SELLING OFF - SLOWLY


Georgetown banker Halsted Layton bought the seven-mile stretch of bayside known as Broadkill Beach in the 1920s. There were already some fishing camps on the beach, mostly squatters, said Lewes attorney Merritt Burke III, who is married to Layton's granddaughter.

The banker formed the Broadkiln Beach Development Co. and started selling lots. "The area became a hit with people from Elsmere and Wilmington, people wanting to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city," Burke said. "The community kind of grew up immediately to the left and right of where the road [Del. 16] ends at the beach."

When Layton died in 1962, "estate taxes were tremendous," forcing the family to sell off more lots to pay the debt, Burke said.

Ironically, Layton's descendants are caught in a similar dilemma. Under county zoning rules, the family was required to draw and register a plot plan by a certain date, or forever lose the right to develop the property, Burke said.

Once a plot plan is recorded, however, the landowner is taxed on the individual lots, generally at a higher rate.

The family submitted a plan for 82 one-acre and half-acre lots on the pristine northern end of Broadkill -- in part to put the area off-limits to dune-destroying beach buggies. They called the community-on-paper Back Bay Cove.

"The family is stuck now in another sequence of events where they have to sell some of the land to keep up with the taxes," Burke said. But unlike a typical developer who is eager for quick sales, the Layton family is in no hurry to sell more than two or three lots a year, he said.

QUIET NEAR THE SHORE


The timing could not have been better for retired General Foods Corp. executive Charles Darling, who came to Delaware when the company opened its Dover plant in 1964. The Darlings lived in Camden and eventually acquired a vacation home on Prime Hook Beach, the next beach north of Broadkill.

After retirement in 1989, the Darlings wanted to consolidate into one home rather than two. So when the first one-acre lots at Back Bay Cove went up for sale in 1992, they bought the northernmost lot and had a substantial cedar and glass home built overlooking the bay. A fellow General Foods retiree bought the lot next door.

Several factors make the Broadkill site more attractive than oceanfront property, he said. "My wife and I both like the peace and quiet - yet we're within 20 minutes of the hustle and bustle of shopping and eating pizza if we choose to go."

Watching shorebirds and foxes hunting the dunes is a favorite pastime. The only drawback, he said, is trying to keep the wild deer out of his tomato plants.

Relative newcomers to the bay area are Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Jack Tarburton and his wife, Maggie, who searched for waterfront property for five years before settling on a home on Prime Hook Beach in late 1996.

The biggest attraction, he said, is "the solitude -- the only commerce in town is one phone booth, and the scenery changes every day." He can overlook Delaware Bay on one side and the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge on the other.

But bayside living is not without its flaws. Nor'easters that flooded the wetlands surrounding the community also put the only access road under water. "We had to find somewhere else to sleep for a couple of nights since we couldn't get home," Tarburton said.

VACATION, THEN RETIREMENT


Many aging baby boomers are looking for a vacation home now with retirement in mind, real estate agents say. These folks are more likely to be into the environment than sun-worshipping and beach parties, which makes the ecology-rich Delaware Bay an attractive alternative.

As a result, development is edging up the bay beyond Broadkill to Prime Hook, Slaughter Beach and Bowers.

One of the controlling factors to growth along the bay is the lack of a central sewer system, said former county administrator Joseph T. Conaway, who now works as a real estate broker and land-use consultant in Millsboro.

"What you see along the bay is pretty much all you're going to get," he said. "There's not going to be a lot of growth."

As development pushes away from the ocean, many also are looking west, where they can get more house and more land, still only 10 to 15 minutes from the beaches, Conaway said. A growing population of retirees is settling in manufactured housing communities such as the Pines at Long Neck.

But still, people want to see water, even if it's a man-made pond, Conaway said. "A creek, a ditch, a branch or canal -- anywhere there's water demands a premium price."

GO WEST, GO WEST


The wave of development that's sweeping Delaware's ocean resorts has crossed the Highway (Route 1) and is rapidly working its way west into coastal Sussex County. This surge not only includes the areas around the inland bays and creeks west of Fenwick Island, Bethany Beach and Rehoboth Beach but also communities like Selbyville, Laurel, Seaford and Millsboro.

Everywhere you look there are trucks emblazoned with the names of builders and contractors and elegant signs for new communities. . Just check out Rt. 54, Rt. 26 or Rt. 24 and you will find these new communities springing up everywhere -- from developments featuring top-quality manufactured housing to elaborate golf course communities designed for year-round living. They're virtually all equipped with amenities like swimming pools and tennis courts, and many of them also feature marinas, docks or other boating facilities.

NEW COMMUNITIES


One striking example is the Village at Bear Trap Dunes west of Bethany Beach. This stylish new, planned community will include 700 homes built around the new and challenging Bear Trap Dunes Golf Course, located along Rt. 26. The community will include a town square, neighborhood parks, and an outdoor amphitheater. The homes will celebrate small-town America with an old-fashioned look complete with big front porches and tree-shaded lawns.

The same development team is completing the final phases of the very successful tennis and lakeside community, Sea Colony West, and has just completed an exclusive development called the Cove on Indian River Bay
that includes a swimming pool, tennis court and easy access to the bay or ocean from a private marina.

Nearby, another waterfront community, South Shore Marina, with homes by several respected Sussex County builders is just getting under way.

Other large developments are in the initial stages west of Fenwick Island and Ryan Homes is slated to begin construction of townhouses, single-family and cluster homes at Southampton, a striking new planned community west of Bethany Beach.

Along Rt. 24, west of Rehoboth, the new Baywood Greens golf course will wind through a 505-acre golf community whose homes will include water, woodland and fairway views. When the community is completed there will be
several hundred one-and two-story houses with graceful porches nestled in four separate villages with tree-lined streets, curbs and sidewalks.

FURTHER WEST


The Sussex County real estate boom -- driven largely by the demand for retirement living and the demand for vacation lifestyles -- is reaching even further west to Laurel and Seaford. Here, realtors say the market for
resales is "torrid" right now and inventories are "low." Even quiet communities like Selbyville and Laurel count retirees among those moving into attractive new developments.

The Seaford area is also booming -- especially waterfront developments with access to the Nanticoke River. Now a regional medical center, realtors says this
self-styled "livable community" is attractive not only to first-time home buyers because of its affordable prices, but also for retirement living. Second home buyers find the Village of Cool Springs an attractive alternative to the crowds at the beach.

LAUREL AND MILLSBORO


Located on the banks of the Nanticoke, Laurel is a town with lots of charm that's noted for its historic spires and stately homes. (More than 800 structures are listed on the National Register.) Striking examples of Victorian architecture line its leafy streets. (The adventurous have turned some into bed-and-breakfast inns.) Nearby ponds are a fisherman's paradise and there's great bass fishing on the Nanticoke River. The town's old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration is one of the area's largest annual events.

Millsboro is situated at the headwaters of the Indian River and is home to the annual powwow of the Nanticoke Indians that features storytelling, arts and crafts, traditional foods and ceremonial dancing. Year-round and seasonal residences dot the river front and ponds in the area. It's all part of a trend.