By all accounts, Phillip Jones III, owner of The Jelly Cabinet, is a magician in the kitchen. Customers swoon over his homemade cinnamon rolls and other baked treats, and the bakery has gained a loyal fan club that includes locals and vacationers. Multiple factors contribute to The Jelly Cabinet’s success, but Jones attributes it to his passion for cooking.  ...

As this year’s real estate issue goes to press, a lot of eyes are watching Fed Reserve officials closely. On March 20, U.S. stock indexes hit record highs after the Federal Reserve did nothing that day. Earlier in the day, the Fed held interest rates unchanged, again keeping the target range of 5.25% to 5.5%. Maintaining comes after raising rates 11 times betwe ...

A tugboat pulls the Commodore Club, a $9 million indoor-outdoor social club and restaurant, down the Cape Fear River on its way to Wrightsville Beach in January. The club now resides on a custom-built barge at Wrightsville Yacht Club on the Intracoastal Waterway. At 120 feet long and 30 feet wide, the club had to be built at a shipyard near the Battleship North Carolina ...

The rise in inflation as a result of significant supply chain issues and aggressive fiscal policy to offset the pandemic closures has caused the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates sharply to quell the rate of increase in prices.  This has, obviously, had far-ranging consequences. For families, inflation is a tax on earnings as their dollars are only able ...

Few large waterfront properties remain undeveloped in coastal North Carolina unless wealthy, philanthropic buyers or conservation groups front the bill to keep developers away. Preserved oceanfront properties are becoming increasingly scarce. So, what happens when a beloved parcel of undeveloped beachfront property is caught between a willing buyer planning to build and ...

Spirits were high at Wilmington International Airport as New Hanover County leaders and airport officials unveiled renderings of what would become the Cape Fear region’s first airport hotel: a 150-room Crowne Plaza not far from the terminal with a restaurant and rooftop bar.  That announcement came in April 2022. Nearly two years later, the hotel’s deve ...

Roots run deep for many fraternal organizations, sororities and social groups in Wilmington and across the Cape Fear region.  Members chartered Elks Lodge No. 532 in Wilmington in 1899. The group’s original charter still hangs in a frame above the door of its meeting room inside the Elks Lodge on Oleander Drive.   After receiving the charter, the ...

Erik Hemingway, co-owner of real estate investment firm Nomad Capital, sailed through the 2008 housing crisis on a boat with his wife and six children.  He bought the boat in 2009 off a remote island in Greece using money he obtained from selling some properties the year before in Arizona, where he began his career in construction. The Hemingway family moved to Cos ...

Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington students above practice reading from a prompter in the school’s studio, which Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Global Social Justice Fund donated funds to build at the all-girls charter school in 2021. Students use the space for classes in visual design, video design, and film and television production, said Michael Frede ...

The local commercial real estate industry continues to follow some of the same trends this year as it did last year. Gas station brands new to the Wilmington area made progress toward welcoming customers, with some under construction and others moving forward in the local planning and permitting pipelines. The office, industrial and retail sectors forged ahead, in some cas ...