Consultants in the city of Burlington’s hire are putting the finishing touches on a plan that could serve as a road map for the revitalization of a once-vibrant area on the east side of town.
The firm of Freese & Nichols was originally tasked with this so-called North Church Street Area Plan in 2025 in order to firm up a vision for the wide swath of territory that stretches from North Church Street’s juncture with Main Street to Burlington’s border with the town of Haw River.
Now, after over a year of workshops and community surveys, the firm’s consultants are preparing to unveil their work at an open house on October 26.
In anticipation of the plan’s rollout, Alexis Garcia, a consultant with Freese & Nichols, sat down with Burlington’s city council last week to share some of the highlights of this planning document. According to Garcia, the recommendations in this plan are based, in part, on the suggestions of area residents who’ve weighed in on the fate of this area.
“We truly used recommendations from the community to drive the plan,” Garcia explained during a city council work session last Monday. “We heard that people wanted restaurants, offices, and grocery stores. But a lot of this is [zoned] light industrial, which is not conducive to commercial use.”
Garcia added that, in order to put the community’s visions to paper, Garcia said that she and her colleagues had to work around existing land uses, which include schools and other public facilities. They also tried to be mindful of private projects that are under construction or on the drawing board.
Among the proposed ventures that were explicitly mentioned in Garcia’s presentation are Mavis Tire and the Carolina Shed Center along North Church Street, the Greystone Reserve Apartments along Graham-Hopedale Road, and the Rocket Carwash and Cookout at the northeast corner of North Church Street and Graham-Hope-dale Road.
Another noteworthy landmark within the study area is Bur-ington’s former Western Electric Plant, which is in the midst of cleanup effort by the U.S. Army – the previous owner of the defunct production facility.
In the end, Garcia said that many of her firm’s recommendations don’t aim so much at wholesale changes but targeted improvements to existing development.
“While there are some vacant properties, we can’t lean on that for investment in the area,” she added. “So, the focus of this plan is reinvestment and redevelopment – how can we redevelop the existing properties in creative ways.”
Area residents will have an opportunity to see the firm’s plan up close and personal when it’s formally unfurled at Burlington’s city hall at 6:00 p.m. on October 26. The plan will also be presented to the city’s planning and zoning commission when its members meet at 7:00 p.m. that same evening.
