NC Division of Coastal Management headquarters, Morehead City

Every CAMA permit on the Outer Banks is a state permit — the local desks issue them, but the rules, the training, and the authority behind them belong to the Division of Coastal Management, and the Division's headquarters is a straight shot down the coast in Morehead City. It is the office to know when the local layer does not have an answer, or when your lot sits where no local officer exists.

The verified details: DCM HQ in Morehead City — the Division's headquarters is at 400 Commerce Avenue, Morehead City, NC 28557, reachable at (252) 808-2808 for CAMA minor permit questions when no local permit officer exists. That contact is the fact worth pinning: most Outer Banks lots have a local officer a short drive away, but the edge cases — the unincorporated stretch with no town desk, the lot whose jurisdiction takes a minute to place — come back to the Division's own staff, and this is the number and address they answer at.

What the Division is, for context that helps: the coastal permitting program is its statutory creation. CAMA's 1974 coastal county scheme — the Coastal Area Management Act defined the coastal area and the Governor's twenty-county designation was filed by May 1, 1974, the framework under which all Outer Banks development is permitted — and the Division of Coastal Management is the agency that has been operating that framework ever since. Three CAMA permit types — the major, general, and minor permit types plus exemption certificates — are its instruments, and Local permit officers issue minor permits is how the minor program reaches the towns: local officers, trained by the Division, issuing the state's small permits locally.

When a builder actually calls Morehead City: to confirm which desk owns a lot whose jurisdiction is unclear; to reach the staff behind a minor permit program where the local roster has a gap, which is exactly the situation the verified contact describes; and to resolve questions the local officer escalates — the Division trains the local permit officers, so the officer's hard questions and the Division's answers are the same system working. The fee schedule also lives at the Division, which matters now more than usual: CAMA permit fees increased July 1, 2025 — the permit fees increased beginning July 1, 2025, per the Division's published schedule — so the current amounts come from the Division's own publication rather than from a neighbour's receipt.

The practical framing: for most builds on this beach you will never need the Morehead City number, because the local layer covers you well. Knowing it is still part of knowing the system — the same reason you keep the county number and the seashore number. The state program that governs every coastal permit has a headquarters with a phone, and this is it.

400 Commerce Avenue, Morehead City — (252) 808-2808 — the state office behind every CAMA permit on this coast, and the fallback desk when the local layer cannot answer.