A real estate company based in Charlotte has purchased about 20 acres of vacant land along Cherry Lane and Gov. Scott Farm Road, across from the Old Fields subdivision, possibly paving the way for future industrial or commercial development in the largely rural and residential area.
A company called Metrolina Retail, LLC has purchased three adjoining parcels along Cherry Lane and Gov. Scott Farm Road, for $705,000 late last month, based on documents that have been filed with Alamance County’s Register of Deeds to consummate the transaction.
Metrolina Retail is different from Metrolina Greenhouses, a 50-year-old wholesale producer of ornamental plants in Huntersville that sells to more than 1,400 retail stores, including Home Depot, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Walmart, in 19 states.
Jim Shiller, chief financial officer at Metrolina Greenhouses told The Alamance News Wednesday, “It was 100 percent not us – we did not purchase that.”
The largest parcel that Metrolina Retail, LLC has purchased, at 1961 Cherry Lane, spans 16.3 acres sandwiched between Gov. Scott Farm Road and Cherry Lane. The LLC also purchased two adjoining slivers of land at 1981 and 1993 Cherry Lane that span a combined total of 3.83 acres. The sale to Metrolina Retail closed in late July, according to the Register of Deeds’ office.
The vacant land that Metrolina Retail purchased is adjacent to nine acres of vacant land that Robert Phipps, Jr., president of Melville Farms, Inc., sold for $591,500 to Intersect Greensboro II LLC (of Atlanta, Georgia) this spring, based on documents filed with the county’s Register of Deeds.
The Metrolina Retail property is situated across Cherry Lane from the 200-plus acres Old Fields subdivision, which has a Haw River street address but is located within Graham’s municipal limits. The Old Fields subdivision was sold to a real estate developer in Wilmington in August 2016.
Metrolina Retail, LLC was created in January 2015 and is described on annual reports filed with the Secretary of State’s office as a real estate company in Charlotte.
The company has not submitted any plans to the Graham’s planning department, city officials told The Alamance News this week.
The newspaper has been unable to locate a website or contact information for Metrolina Retail; and the mailing address in Graham listed on the deed conveyed with the sale corresponds to that for the CoOperative, a co-working space owned by developer Jason Cox.

