In March 2025, town crews put up barricades that read "road closed" at the foot of Main Street in downtown Swansboro. No detour, no press conference, just a locked gate at one of the three public docks that make up the town's boater and pedestrian access to the White Oak River. An inspection had turned up structural concerns serious enough to shut the dock down on the spot, and WITN reported that town officials had no timeline for reopening it.
That single closure is a useful place to start if you're shopping for waterfront property in downtown Swansboro, because it points at something the listing photos never show you. A deed that describes water frontage on the White Oak River tells you where your property line ends. It does not tell you what you're allowed to build off that line, who else has a say in it, or whether the public dock you were counting on for overflow access will still be standing next season. In this stretch of town, water access has turned out to be less a fixed feature of ownership and more an ongoing negotiation between property owners, the town, and the people who make their living on the water.
What the Bake Bottle Brew fight actually settled
The clearest evidence of that negotiation played out over several months in 2022 and 2023, centered on a single business on Front Street.
Jack Harnatkiewicz, owner of the waterfront shop known as Bake Bottle Brew, applied to extend his dock by four slips. Because the addition would bring the total to eleven slips, town ordinance classified the project as a marina, which triggered a special-use permit requirement rather than a routine building sign-off. The application also needed a certificate of appropriateness from the Swansboro Historic Preservation Committee, since the property sits inside the town's historic district and any dock work there has to meet design standards for the waterfront.
Neither approval was automatic. At the historic preservation hearing, the vote split 2-2 before the committee chairman cast the tiebreaking vote in favor, and one member resigned immediately afterward, saying her vote came "from her heart" but that she worried the decision would hurt other businesses nearby. On the commission side, the town brought in an outside consulting firm, Applied Technology and Management of Charleston, South Carolina, to study whether the expanded dock would interfere with boat traffic at the adjacent Church Street Town Dock. The firm's finding was blunt: once Bake Bottle Brew's dock was complete, the four upriver slips at the town dock, originally built to handle boats up to 46 feet, would only be safe for vessels up to about 30 feet. Commissioners approved the expansion anyway, by a 3-2 vote, over the objection of Tim and Jane Simpson, who operate Lady Swan Tours from a dock just upriver and argued the tighter clearance could put their business at risk.
The lesson here is not that expansion is impossible. It's that owning waterfront frontage gets you the right to apply, not the right to build. A property's dock history, whether it required a special-use permit, a historic preservation certificate, or a navigation study, is a real diligence item, and it's one that rarely shows up in a standard listing sheet.
The flip side: riparian rights as something you can give away
If Bake Bottle Brew shows how contested dock rights can get, the town's Moore Street Dock shows the opposite instinct, and it reveals something else about riparian rights that's easy to miss: they're not just attached to a deed, they can be donated.
Randy Swanson, owner of the Icehouse Waterfront Restaurant at the foot of Moore Street, agreed to let the town build a public dock that wraps around his property. Then-town manager Pat Thomas explained the arrangement plainly, saying the town had
"also obtained a pledge from the owner of the Icehouse that he is willing to give the town his riparian rights in front of his property to advance this concept."
The project cost an estimated $95,000, with the town pursuing a Waterfront Access Grant to cover 75 percent of that and the remaining roughly $24,000 coming from town funds. The result, once built, gave Swansboro a floating public dock at the end of Moore Street with free slips for smaller boats, according to the town's own visitor information.
For a waterfront buyer, this matters because it means the water rights attached to a given piece of downtown Swansboro property aren't necessarily static. A previous owner may have already transferred some portion of those rights to the town in exchange for a public amenity next door, which can affect what you're actually able to build later, even if the deed itself still lists the property as waterfront.
Public docks aren't guaranteed either
The Main Street closure that opened this piece turned out to be more than a temporary repair. By late November 2025, the Swansboro Board of Commissioners had taken up a grant project ordinance for the full replacement of the Main Street Dock, according to the town's own meeting packet, rather than a patch-and-reopen job. That's a meaningfully different timeline and cost than a routine repair, and it's a reminder that the public docks a buyer might be counting on for casual water access, the ones that don't require owning your own dock at all, are themselves subject to structural age, funding cycles, and town budget decisions. If a public dock's status matters to your plans, it's worth a call to Swansboro's town offices to confirm where that project stands before you assume it will be there.
Here's how the three episodes compare:
| Dock | What happened | What it tells a buyer |
|---|---|---|
| Bake Bottle Brew (Front St.) | Special-use permit and historic preservation certificate required for a 4-slip expansion; approved 3-2 despite a consultant's navigation concerns | Expanding a private dock in the historic district is a permitted activity, not a guaranteed one, and it can affect what neighboring docks can safely accommodate |
| Moore Street Dock | Icehouse Waterfront Restaurant owner donated his riparian rights so the town could build a public dock around his property, funded largely by a Waterfront Access Grant | Riparian rights can be transferred away from a property before you buy it, changing what's actually available to a future owner |
| Main Street Dock | Closed for safety in March 2025; by November 2025 the town had moved from repair to a funded full replacement | Even town-owned public water access isn't permanent, and its status can change on a timeline outside any buyer's control |
What to actually check before you write an offer
None of this means downtown Swansboro waterfront property is a bad buy. It means the diligence looks different than it would in a subdivision with a straightforward community dock and a homeowners association handbook. Before you get attached to a specific property, it's worth confirming a few things directly with the town rather than assuming them from the listing:
- Whether the deed's riparian rights language matches what you expect, since those rights have been transferred separately from the land in at least one documented case in town.
- Whether the property or its immediate neighbors have any special-use permit or certificate of appropriateness history on file, particularly if you're planning to build or expand a dock.
- What length and clearance restrictions apply to slips near the property, since a neighboring dock's construction can change what's safe for boats already docked nearby.
- The current operating status of any public dock your plans depend on, since even town-owned docks have closed on short notice for safety reasons.
A few questions worth asking
Does owning waterfront footage guarantee I can build or expand a dock? No. In Swansboro's historic downtown, dock projects that create more than ten total slips require a special-use permit, and projects in the historic district also need a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Committee. Both are discretionary approvals, not automatic rights.
Can riparian rights be separated from a property? Yes, at least in practice. The Icehouse Waterfront Restaurant's owner transferred his riparian rights to the town to enable the Moore Street Dock, which means a future buyer of that property should not assume the same rights are still attached.
If a public dock near my property is closed, does that affect the property's value or usability? It can, particularly if your plans for the property assumed access to that dock. The Main Street Dock's 2025 closure and subsequent replacement funding show that public infrastructure timelines can run well beyond a single season.
Waterfront property in downtown Swansboro carries real appeal, the kind that comes from a walkable historic district built right up against the water. It also carries a permitting and rights history that's worth understanding before you're the one asking the town for a special-use permit or discovering a neighbor already has one. If you're weighing a specific property on Front Street, Moore Street, or anywhere along Swansboro's waterfront, Linda Rike has spent decades working these exact questions with buyers and sellers across the Crystal Coast. Contact us before you write an offer, not after.
