Developer Shawn Cummings is planning a commercial development anchored by a large grocery store and other businesses for a busy stretch of South N.C. Highway 119, about two-tenths of a mile from the Garrett-Hawfields Middle School complex but on the opposite side of the highway.
“We’re going to target Publix first,” Cummings confirmed last week for The Alamance News.
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The future commercial development is planned for approximately 25 acres just beyond Southern States at 1902 South N.C. Highway 119 and across from the existing Mebane Ridge Marketplace shopping center. The site is also on the same south side of I-85/40 as Buc-ee’s (near exit 152) but one exit further east (near exit 153 along I-85/40) of the forthcoming travel plaza at 1425 Trollingwood-Hawfields Road.
Cummings is partnering on the N.C. Highway 119 project with Daniel Lim, president of capital markets for Cummings’ development company, VennTerra, a one-stop shop now headquartered in Graham that specializes in land acquisition, design, site work, and construction for residential and commercial projects.
Cummings and Lim closed two weeks ago on the purchase of nine parcels located between 1913 and 2029 South N.C. Highway 119 –including several adjacent, unaddressed parcels – for just over $4.9 million, based on documents that were filed with Alamance County’s Register of Deeds to consummate the transactions. All of the parcels are located within Mebane’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ).
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Five parcels that the developers have purchased along South N.C. Highway 119 currently have single-family homes that are between 45 and 75 years old, Alamance County tax records show. One parcel, at 1923 South N.C. Highway 119, has a “converted dwelling” currently used as a chiropractic office, according to Alamance County’s GIS mapping system.
Cummings envisions the future commercial project along South NC 119 as being modeled on what was done with the old Sears store that had been located at the east end of Holly Hill Mall along Huffman Mill Road in Burlington, he explained in the interview. Cummings pointed out that the acreage he’s purchased for the future commercial project along South N.C. Highway 119 and the Publix property in Burlington are about the same.
The former Sears store at Holly Hill Mall was razed several years ago to make way for a 48,387-square foot Publix grocery store at the intersection of Huffman Mill Road with Church Street, in Church Street Commons.
Cummings plans to install a signalized entrance at the juncture of South N.C. Highway 119 with Hawfields Middle School Drive that will serve both the commercial development and the elementary/ middle school complex, he said.
However, Cummings added, he’s “probably a good two or three years out” from starting construction on the future shopping center. “We haven’t talked with Mebane [city officials yet],” Cummings told the newspaper.
The first phase of development to come up with a preliminary design, he said, and present it to the city’s Technical Review Committee (TRC) to determine what measures will be needed to comply with Mebane’s development ordinances.
The N.C. 119 commercial project will be in the preconstruction, design, and zoning compliance phase through the end of this year, based on materials that an Alamance News reporter was allowed to review while sitting in on a weekly projects meeting with Cummings and his development team at the company’s headquarters in Graham on Monday morning.
The tentative timeframe for the project calls for a final site plan and construction documents to be completed by next spring, based on the project materials that the newspaper reviewed.
