After nearly two years of site-related delays, Alamance County is about to select a contractor to develop a new EMS station that will eventually serve the eastern parts of the county.
According to assistant county manager Brian Baker, the county’s administrators are on the precipice of selecting this firm thanks to the finalization of a “land swap” with a Greensboro-based developer that had promised to provide the county with property off of NC 119 to build the new ambulance base.
“The deed for [the swap] has been completed and filed,” Baker confirmed in an interview Monday. “The county has out a [request for qualifications] for a design-builder, and that decision will be reached this week. The contract will then go to the commissioners for their approval.”
The first murmurs about this real estate barter arose in December of 2024, when a representative of the Greensboro-based Koury Corporation prematurely informed Mebane’s city council that the county had agreed to give up 1.67 acres that it had previously acquired along South Third Street for the new ambulance base.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
MORE LOCAL NEWS THAN YOU’LL FIND ANYWHERE ELSE! SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
According to the company’s representative, the Koury Corporation intended to use this land to develop an entrance into the residential portion of a massive mixed-use development. In return, the county had purportedly accepted a somewhat larger parcel of land that the developer planned to acquire at the juncture of NC 119 and Smith Drive – just beyond Mebane’s municipal limits.
[Story continues below graphic of future shopping center and photo of land at corner of Smith Drive and NC 119 bypass, where Koury has exchanged land for that formerly owned by county on South Third Street.]
Mebane’s city council went on to approve the zoning for the company’s mixed-use development on the assumption that the land swap with the county had been completed. The Alamance News later pressed the point with county officials, who admitted they had not ceded control of the Third Street property – and wouldn’t until the Koury Corporation made good on its end of the bargain.
The county’s land swap with the developer remained in limbo for the next year and a half as the Koury Corporation negotiated the purchase of a much larger lot that included the 2.58-acres earmarked for the new EMS station. In the meantime, work has proceeded at full tilt on the rest of the company’s 83-acre development, which is expected to include nearly 700 apartments and townhomes, as well as 300,000 square feet of retail, by the time its complete.
It wasn’t until sometime this summer that Koury Corporation finally firmed up its end of the deal. Then, on July 22, the county filed a special warranty deed to convey the property it owned along Third Street to the Koury Corporation.
This document referred a “certain land exchange agreement” that the county and the developer had originally signed on September 16, 2025 to “simultaneously convey real property to one another.” This deal, which was revised on July 14 of this year, also reportedly obliges the developer to do some site preparations along NC 119 – as Baker recalled when he spoke to the newspaper earlier this week.
“There’s also an agreement that says the Koury Company will do some additional work on our land, and that has not happened yet,” the assistant county manager added.
