The Holden Beach Pier Vote Failed. Watch Where the Money Went Instead.
September 24, 2026
September 24, 2026
"I fished here my whole life. My children, my grandchildren, and the pier is just a part of our history. I'm devastated, I want the pier."
That's Julie Dixon, standing near the empty lot at 441 Ocean Boulevard West in April 2025, days after the town tore down the pier house that had stood there for more than 70 years. Her grief was real and it was shared by a lot of people who've spent summers on that stretch of Holden Beach. Six months later, when the town asked voters to pay for a new pier, that same sentiment lost. Badly.
Most of the coverage since has framed this as a fight between nostalgia and money, sentiment on one side, spreadsheets on the other. That framing is too simple, and it misses the part of the story that actually matters if you live here or own property here. The vote wasn't really a referendum on whether Holden Beach wants a pier. Almost everyone, including people who voted no, said they wanted one. What failed was a specific, incomplete financial ask, and what the town has done with its money since then tells you more about the pier's real odds than any quote from a town hall microphone.
On November 4, 2025, Holden Beach voters rejected a $7.3 million general obligation bond that would have paid to demolish the remaining pier structure and build a new one. The margin wasn't close. Out of 562 ballots cast, roughly 62 percent voted no, according to results reported by WECT. Commissioners later approved Resolution 25-10 certifying that outcome.
Here's the part that got lost in the tax-increase headlines: that $7.3 million never covered the whole project. It only paid for two things.
It did not cover the debt still outstanding from the town's original $3.3 million purchase of the pier and pier property in 2022. It did not cover a new pier building, the kind Ms. Dixon and longtime resident Steve Jenkins were picturing when they talked about restoring the property "the way it was before." And it did not cover ongoing maintenance, which the town's own engineers estimated at $72,560 a year to keep a wooden pier standing for 50 years in a barrier-island climate.
One more detail mattered to a lot of the no votes. The new pier, if built, would be uninsurable against wind or water damage. Resident Mark Collman put it plainly when he told WECT that spending upward of $12 million on "a structure that can't be insured" made no sense "when you live in a hurricane zone."
Even Mayor Alan Holden, who has publicly wondered aloud whether the town should simply let the pier go, said after the vote that the campaign itself was part of the problem: the materials presented to voters were "more of a sell of a dream than actually facts."
Run the actual math and the no vote looks less like sentiment losing to money and more like arithmetic winning on its own terms. Town documents put the total cost of servicing the bond, principal plus roughly $4.2 million in interest, at close to $11.6 million over its life. For a homeowner with a $1 million property, the estimated tax impact was $316 a year. That's not the number that killed the referendum by itself. What killed it was that $316 a year bought a walkway with a roof, not the building, not the maintenance fund, not insurance, and not an answer to what happens to the roughly $3.3 million in purchase debt the town is already carrying on a property that's been closed to the public since 2022.
Lisa Holmes, another resident quoted in the WECT coverage, captured the ambivalence well: she said she wasn't against doing something with the pier, but felt the referendum "was a little bit too early and not explained enough to voters." Regina Martin, who owns rental property on the island, argued the other direction at the public hearings, telling commissioners that a well-built pier would still be standing for her great-grandchildren long after the current debate is forgotten. Both were right about different things. The town's timeline was rushed and its financing was partial, and the emotional case for the pier as a piece of the town's identity never disappeared just because the bond did.
This is the part that tells you more than the vote count. In the same budget cycle where the pier bond failed, the town redirected BPART funds, the beach protection and renourishment money it had also been eyeing for pier costs, toward beach nourishment instead. That's not a symbolic gesture. Beach nourishment protects every oceanfront and near-oceanfront property's foundation and, by extension, every property owner's ability to insure their home at all. A town that is simultaneously unwilling to bond an uninsurable pier and willing to spend real, immediate dollars protecting the sand under existing houses is telling you where its confidence actually sits, regardless of what gets said from the podium.
Meanwhile, the pier project itself hasn't been shelved so much as sent back to committee, again. According to the town's own project tracker on hbtownhall.com, commissioners issued a new request for qualifications for an underwater inspection of the remaining pier structure after the referendum failed, selected MidAtlantic Engineering in response, and were set to consider a contract with the firm at their July 2026 meeting. In other words: two years after HDR Engineering first recommended replacement over repair, the town is still commissioning studies rather than committing to a construction timeline or a funding mechanism that would actually cover the full cost.
For residents trying to keep the sequence straight, here's how the pier saga has actually unfolded:
Coastal Review, which has covered this closely since the original purchase, reported that the property has remained "a divisive topic" for the town's board for three years running. Nothing about the underwater study changes that. It just delays the next real decision point, again, while the meter on that original purchase debt keeps running.
If you own property near Ocean Boulevard West, or you're weighing whether the lack of a pier changes how the eastern end of the island feels day to day, the honest answer right now is that nobody, including the town's own commissioners, has committed to a number or a date. What you can say with confidence is that Holden Beach has already made one real financial choice this cycle, and it wasn't the pier. It was the sand.
That's not a verdict on whether the pier comes back. Underwater studies sometimes lead to a cleaner, cheaper ask that voters actually approve. But if you're trying to read the town's own confidence level in where this is headed, the budget line for beach nourishment says more than any campaign flyer did.
We keep an eye on stories like this one because they shape how a place feels to live in, not just what a house is worth. If you're weighing a move to Holden Beach, or you already call it home and want to talk through what a stretch of coastline actually looks like once you separate the headlines from the budget, Better Beach Sales is happy to walk through it with you. Schedule a Consultation and let's talk about what Holden Beach living actually looks like right now.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Imagine a place where work and play seamlessly blend into one fulfilling lifestyle. Our approach at Better Beach Sales goes beyond finding you the perfect home—it’s about building a community that thrives on collaboration and the natural beauty of Oak Island. Together, we can create opportunities, share success, and truly enjoy all that our coastal haven has to offer.