Developer Shawn Cummings is moving ahead with his plans for a commercial project at the intersection of University Drive and South Church Street in west Burlington – which now includes the former Burlington Pediatrics property at 3804 South Church Street that his company, VennTerra, has acquired.
Cummings purchased the Burlington Pediatrics property last month for $1.875 million, based on documents that have been filed with Alamance County’s Register of Deeds to consummate the transaction. The former Burlington Pediatrics property includes 1.31 acres and an 8,829-square foot medical office that was built in 2000, Alamance County’s tax records show.
Cummings acquired the other two other parcels nearby – 7.54 acres of vacant land at an unaddressed stretch of South Church Street and 6.583 acres of land at 1144 University Drive in Burlington – several years ago after a different developer, Greensboro-based Ed Tam, defaulted on a $5.8 million bank loan that had been secured with a deed of trust to the property.
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While the change in ownership ultimately doomed Tam’s plans to develop the “Burlington West Plaza,” as it was described in court documents at the time, the first tenant originally secured for the property – a Sheetz gas station and convenience store – remains on board, Cummings confirmed in a recent interview with The Alamance News.
Cummings purchased the first two parcels at the intersection of University Drive and South Church Street for $2.9 million at a foreclosure auction in April 2019, based on documents that were filed at the time in the special proceedings division within the Alamance County Clerk of Court’s office.
The future commercial development in west Burlington is one of two retail projects that Cummings has recently announced. Cummings is also planning to build a commercial development anchored by a large grocery store, possibly a Publix, and other businesses on 25 acres along South N.C. Highway 119, across from the Garrett-Hawfields Middle School complex in Mebane.
The newly-acquired Burlington Pediatrics property is adjacent to the two other parcels that Cummings owns at the intersection of University Drive and South Church Street, but it won’t be combined with the 14-acre site that is targeted for the construction of a 6,139-square foot Sheetz store at the northwest corner, based on a preliminary site plan that VennTerra provided for the newspaper Wednesday.
Instead, the medical office building along South Church Street – one of three locations in the county for Burlington Pediatrics – will remain in its current location, Todd Lambert, principal engineer for VennTerra, confirmed in a subsequent interview Wednesday afternoon.
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The Burlington Pediatrics property will have a signalized intersection that aligns with Wade Coble Drive across South Church Street – and is home to the Twin Lakes retirement community – as well as a connection at the back of the property to the forthcoming commercial project, based on the preliminary site plan that VennTerra provided to the newspaper.
The site of the commercial project had been rezoned for conditional business uses years ago, said Lambert, who had been the city of Burlington’s engineer before he went to work for Cummings’ company last year. The Burlington Pediatrics property is zoned office/industrial, and no request for rezoning is being contemplated at this time, the engineer said.
“We will be able to finish the project and control that access with the new signalized intersection at Wade Coble,” Lambert explained.
The plans for a total of three signalized intersections to serve the forthcoming commercial development at the juncture of University Drive with South Church Street have been approved through the city of Burlington’s Technical Review Committee (TRC), which includes Chuck Edwards, the local division engineer for the Department of Transportation (DOT), Lambert told the newspaper.
“We will shut [down] the western driveway for Burlington Pediatrics and reroute traffic onto a new street,” Cummings said in the earlier interview, while stressing the preliminary nature of his plans. “Everybody coming out of Twin Lakes will have a signalized intersection. We think that’s a positive for everybody.”
“We’ll be adding a turn lane across from Lowes Foods,” Cummings said, referring to the grocery store that anchors the Shoppes at Waterford at 1191 University Drive. “It has a median now; we will take the median out and add a turn lane and a signal.”
“We’ve been waiting on [DOT’s] project at University and South Church [to be completed],” Cummings said in the earlier interview, he said of the road widening that DOT recently completed as part of its Transportation Improvement Projects (TIP) list for the region. “The widening made Church Street five lanes all the way through the intersection going west on [Highway] 70 past University Drive [and] added on turn lane going south on University,” he said.
VennTerra’s next step will be to submit construction documents, outlining erosion control and grading plans for the commercial project, to the city’s engineering department, Lambert elaborated Wednesday. After that, the developer will need to obtain driveway permits from the local division engineer’s office for DOT and approvals for the signal plan from state transportation officials, he said.
Once all of those boxes are checked, VennTerra will begin the site work – most likely around the middle of this fall, Lambert said.
In addition to a new Sheetz location, the preliminary site plan for the commercial project at University Drive and South Church Street includes three “outparcel areas,” which could be subdivided if needed, based on the current conditional zoning designation, the engineer said Wednesday.
VennTerra is already marketing the outparcels to prospective tenants, though neither Cummings nor Lambert would identify which companies are being targeted.
