Construction appears to have completely stopped on a three-story, 58,764-square foot medical office building that the Duke University Health System had planned to build at 480 Gregory Poole Lane in Mebane.
Duke University Health System had paid $3.1 million several years ago to purchase 12 lots, spanning 22.44 acres, along both sides of Gregory Poole Lane, between an existing Bojangles location and a Gregory Poole Equipment store, for the project, based on documents filed with Alamance County’s Register of Deeds.
Preliminary plans for the project that were subsequently filed with the city of Mebane showed that the project would include several buildings, city officials confirmed for The Alamance News.
The building permit was issued by the city on October 27, 2022, and the last inspection was completed January 19, 2023, according to records of the city of Mebane. Because there has been more than 12 months since the last inspection, Mebane considers that the permit has expired; while it could have sought an extension, which are generally granted, Duke did not seek one.
[Story continues below photos.]
THEN (2022):
NOW: (2024):
Most of the parcels, though not all, were purchased from the Gregory Poole Equipment Company. Several of the more recent property acquisitions, consummated between July and October 2022, were from other private sellers, according to documents filed with the county’s Register of Deeds. The property that Duke University Health System purchased is located off the Trollingwood Hawfields Road exit from I-85/40, on the north side of the interstate; some of the lots front I-85/40.
C.T. Wilson, a commercial contractor with offices in Greensboro and Durham, issued an invitation for bids in July of 2022, according to multiple construction trade journals.
Preliminary construction drawings and structural plans developed by Perkins & Will, the architectural firm designing the Mebane campus for Duke Health, were posted in construction industry publications with an invitation to bid on the Mebane project.
While Duke University Health System is based in the Triangle, its plans for the nearly 60,000-square foot office building in Mebane initially seemed to reflect a continuation of the long-running competition between the state’s two largest healthcare systems, UNC Health Care and Duke, to expand their footprints, which both systems have said is needed to meet demand for healthcare services created by the state’s growing population.
Crews from Alabama-based Hoar Construction had started site work for the project along Gregory Poole Lane in early 2023 but that, too, has stalled.
However, neither Alamance County nor Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) records give any indication that any of the property Duke Health purchased for the project is for sale.
Duke Health officials, including the director of the news office for Duke Health, had not responded to multiple phone and email inquiries over the past two weeks from The Alamance News by press time Wednesday night.
