Sunset Park

Located just minutes from downtown and across the street from the spectacular Cypress Tress of Greenfield Lake, Sunset Park is one of Wilmington's most "funky," up-and-coming neighborhoods. The wide streets, tree-line sidewalks and renovated bungalows create character that many new developments lack.

Below is an excerpt from a Star News article regarding the neighborhood written by Ben Steelman in July.

The crepe myrtles are blooming in Wilmington's Sunset Park – along the median down Central Boulevard, and throughout the yards of brick and frame bungalows lining the streets named after presidents.

For a while, you might think nothing's changed at Sunset Park. The clothes are a bit different, but the youngsters on the sidewalk aren't all that different from those who made the pilgrimage to Seashore Drugs back in the 1960s.

Look around, though, and you'll notice the difference. A lot of the homes are being spiffed up. Some yards, at least, are being mowed more often. New faces are moving in among the older residents; one of Wilmington's signature blue-collar neighborhoods is becoming a home for young professionals, artists and even a few hipsters.

"We wanted an older home with character," said Shannon Dunne, who moved to the Park two years ago with her husband Owen, a partner in the Odessa and Pravda night spots downtown. "But we wanted a neighborhood feel."

The streets and lots, wider and more generous than in other Old Wilmington neighborhoods – a by-product of Sunset Park's design as one of the city's first planned suburbs in the 1910s – were a big part of the appeal, she added.

"There's room to grow here," said Dunne, a mother of two small children, with a third on the way. "I feel it's a little bit safer here."

For people like myself who remember an older Sunset Park, that last sentence might come as a surprise.

When I lived there in the 1980s, some pizza services wouldn't deliver in Sunset Park after 6 p.m. The neighborhood shared street names with Dove Meadows, an adjoining subsidized-housing complex with a reputation for drugs and drive-by shootings.

Older stereotypes pictured the Park as a sort of redneck Riviera, dominated by rental properties and pickups.

More recently, an e-mail joke listing "limited-edition Barbie dolls for the Wilmington market" described "Sunset Park Barbie" as "the only Barbie willing to do manual labor. Ken comes in a meatpacker's uniform and is missing three fingers on left hand."

That image stands at odds with the growing affluence of the neighborhood, where a 2,400 square-foot "green" home, built by Anne & Bradshaw General Contractors at 2039 Jefferson St., recently sold for $307,000. Or with real estate listings for Sunset Park bungalows commanding price tags of $150,000 to $200,000 or more.

"Prices have gone up there spectacularly," said Jonathan Barfield, president of the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors. "I think people now view Sunset Park as an alternative to the Historic District."

Sunset Park properties, once heavily rented, are 71 percent owner-occupied, said neighborhood association president Johnnie Henagan, who lived here from 1981 to 1987, then returned in 1994 after his retirement from the American Red Cross.

"This is a very close-knit, caring community, where your neighbors look out for you," said Henagan's wife, Ilse. Many Sunset Park residents, she added, have lived there for 60 or 70 years, almost since their homes were built.

"I always think of it as an Andy Griffith neighborhood," said local historian Susan Taylor Block, who grew up there in the '50s and '60s,"with lots of front porches and swings."

In a way, that's the Sunset Park I always knew – a settled place tucked neatly between Carolina Beach Road, south of downtown, and the N.C. State Port facility on the Cape Fear River.

I bought a 1940s bungalow back on Harrison Street in 1979 – one of dozens such structures thrown up during World War II to house workers at the nearby N.C. Shipbuilding Co., located where the port now stands.

My neighbors included a retired Wilmington fire chief, a Presbyterian minister, a hospital nurse, an electrician and a young real estate executive. At Christmas, they and fellow Sunset Park residents gave Kings Grant a run for its money, putting out elaborate, often animated lighting displays, especially along Central Boulevard.

It was so all-American, it was almost creepy, one reason that director David Lynch filmed part of Blue Velvet along Northern Boulevard: the fire truck cruising past the tree-lined yards, with Mr. Fireman waving in slow motion.

Still, as Sunset Park resident Donald Lieseke told the Star-News in 1994, "our neighborhood is kind of a secret."

Not any more. Sunset Park has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years. "We've come a long way," said Ilse Henagan, who remembers some of shooting incidents along Carolina Beach Road in the 1990s. "You see young people walking and jogging in the evening, pushing baby carriages. People hang out on their porches. Years ago, you didn't see that."

Locals credit the closing of a couple of rowdy bars on Carolina Beach Road in 1999 and the closing of Dove Meadows, which was repossessed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and bulldozed in 2002 to make way for new single-family dwellings.

Others credit the Sunset Park Neighborhood Association, organized in 1993 by Tony DeCarolis, Lieseke and other local homeowners. The association lobbied city officials for traffic controls and increased police patrols. It also succeeded in gaining some improvements to spruce up the neighborhood's appearance, such as brick pillars and bronze-colored plaques at its main entrances.

Statistics from the Wilmington Police Department show that crime rates in Sunset Park have declined dramatically since the 1990s. If current trends continue, the neighborhood will end 2007 with its lowest crime levels in a decade.

Another big step, Henagan said, was having Sunset Park added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, almost 90 years after it was first laid out. Besides giving the neighborhood a certain cachet, National Register status makes property owners eligible for federal investment tax credits on rehabilitation work.

At the same time, a new wave of residents arrived as older home owners – who'd lived there since the war – passed away or moved to retirement facilities. Many were young couples or singles, drawn by real estate bargains. As recently as 2000, decent two-bedroom houses were available in Sunset Park for as little as $75,000.

Among the newcomers is Andy Hight, who bought and restored one house on Northern Boulevard and is renovating another on the same street.

"I like the older houses," said Hight, who telecommutes to a job in northern Virginia. "At the same time, the streets are wider than in a lot of the older neighborhoods in Wilmington. You have the grassy medians on Northern and Central boulevards. It's a lot nicer."

Old history, new headaches

The broad streets and the civilized layout derive from Sunset Park's history as a planned community. In 1912, the Fidelity Trust and Development Co. bought a 600-acre tract south of Greenfield Lake for a "first-class residential park." Unlike earlier Wilmington suburbs, such as Carolina Place, Carolina Heights and Winoca Park, which developed along streetcar lines, this development owed its existence to the automobile, which would link residents to downtown.

Developers hoped to sell Sunset Park lots to an upscale, professional clientele, who would enjoy the use of a planned park along the riverfront. Golf courses, tennis courts and a tourist hotel were part of the original plans.

In 1918, however, the Liberty and Carolina shipyards were built along the river nearby. The tourist hotel ideas were abandoned; Fidelity Trust sold out its remaining interest in the park, and the Victory Home Co. began building smaller houses – bungalows and Craftsman-style homes – for yard workers.

During the 1920s, according to a history prepared for the neighborhood's National Register applications, other growing subdivisions, such as Forest Hills and Brookwood, began to draw prospective buyers away from Sunset Park. Growth stalled during the Depression, but the park revived with the start of World War II, when the shipyard opened and began hiring by the thousands.

The 1940s saw the building of Sunset Park Baptist and Sunset Park Methodist churches, both along Central Boulevard. Locals recall a friendly competition, as each congregation strove to erect a taller steeple. (Sunset Park United Methodist would merge with Grace United Methodist Church in 1998; its sanctuary is now occupied by the Upper Room Praise and Worship Center. Sunset Park Baptist Church continues to thrive.)

By the end of the war, Sunset Park was well defined as a neighborhood of roughly 225 acres, bounded by Sunset Boulevard to the north, and Southern Boulevard to the south. Brick ranch houses in '50s and '60s style began to sprout on remaining empty lots among the plentiful live oaks, pecan and pear trees.

"There were lots and lots of kids," recalled Block. "We'd be roller-skating in the streets. Sometimes we'd walk up to Seashore Drugs for a cherry smash."

Locals could still hear boat whistles and train whistles, Block recalled – as well as the bleating of sheep from a five-acre farm on the northwest fringe of Sunset Park.

Many of Block's contemporaries went on to become teachers and nurses, but a few took other career paths: Abby Godwin grew up to become the sculptor who would design North Carolina's Vietnam War memorial in Raleigh.

By design, Sunset Park was overwhelmingly white. Until the 1940s, all lots came with restrictive covenants, forbidding buyers to resell or bequeath their properties to non-whites. During the 1980s, however, Sunset Park began slowly to diversify, and the old Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses on Northern Boulevard was taken over by Wilmington's Primera Iglesia Bautista, a Hispanic congregation.

The upsurge of the past few years hasn't erased all the neighborhood's headaches. Johnnie Henagan defines traffic as Sunset Park's top problem. City officials have slightly altered the street layout on Northern and Central boulevards to deter speeders and slow down traffic. Still, Henagan and other residents worry about the hundreds of tractor-trailers that sometimes steer onto neighborhood streets to reach the port.

Shannon Dunne worries about Sunset Park Elementary School, which sits on the other side of Carolina Beach Road, near Greenfield Lake. Although test scores have improved in recent years, more than 80 percent of the students receive free or reduced-price school lunches – generally, an indicator that they come from low-income homes, often with little school preparation. Dunne hopes that New Hanover County's plans to turn Sunset Park Elementary into a magnet school will help turn things around.

"It's still kind of a mix," Dunne said. "You'll drive along and see two or three homes that are really nice, and then several that aren't so nice. Still, it seems to be turning around."