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A third Wake Forest shopping center,
Gateway Commons at the corner of Jones
Dairy Road and the N.C. 98 bypass, was
announced this week.
It will join two others
which either underway or announced, The
Shoppes at Caveness Farm and Wake Forest
Towne Center. The Shoppes have an
approved master plan; the Towne Center
has not yet submitted plans.
Planner Ann Ayers is
reviewing, for the second time, the
master plan for Gateway Commons
submitted by Starmount Co. The first
plan was sent back for revisions. The
sign announcing the center has been up
for some time.
“It’s likely to go on the
May planning board agenda,” Ayers said.
Gateway Commons would be
anchored by a grocery store, name
unknown, and will be a strip mall
similar to Heritage Station on Rogers
Road. It would have 102,000 square feet
of retail space.
There are also a dozen
out-parcels along Jones Dairy Road and
the bypass.
It is a large property, 60
acres, bounded by Jones Dairy Road to
the east, the bypass to the north,
Heritage Lake Road (still under
construction) to the west and Friendship
Chapel Road (which is being extended to
Jones Dairy) to the south.
Ayers said the owners plan a
three-phase development, beginning on
about 40 acres.
Starmount has also submitted
a special use application for the
project
Bradley Rice of Starmount
announced the plans during an
International Council of Shopping
Centers Idea Exchange convention in
Charlotte on Tuesday. In an interview
this week, Rice said they have been
working on the plans for about a year.
There are no signed contracts for the
stores or out-parcels yet, but they will
have a grocery store and
neighborhood-oriented stores such as a
dry-cleaners and a restaurant.
Rice said they hope to break
ground late this year.
The Shoppes at Caveness
Farm, which will be anchored by
Steinmart, is planned on the east side
of Capital Boulevard just north of
Wal-Mart. Work is underway on three
restaurants – Chili’s, Red Robin and
Texas Roadhouse – on out-parcels,
grading for the rest of the tract was
completed some time ago, but no
construction has begun.
Wake Forest Towne Center, a
major upscale shopping center on the old
Parker-Hannifin site on Wake Union
Church Road, was announced earlier this
month at the economic summit.
Ayers said she has not yet
received the plans for Wake Forest Towne
Center.
Both The Shoppes at Caveness
Farm and Wake Forest Towne Center are
being developed by Weingarten Realty
Investors from Texas.
Wake Forest Towne Center
will have 385,000 square feet of retail
space, and the anchor, Rob Hicks of
Weingarten said at the economic summit,
will be a store with a presence in the
Triangle that is not at Triangle Town
Center. The current rumors are it will
be a J.C. Penney’s.
Wake Forest Towne Center
will have a large tract, about 65 acres.
It will include the two tracts of the
Parker-Hannifin site and 20 acres to the
south with frontage on both Wake Union
Church Road and Kearney Road owned by
one of Jim Adams’ companies, St. Ives
Commercial Properties LLC.
The Wake Forest Planning
Board will be busy between now and May
with the plans for Holding Village.
Planning Director Chip Russell gave them
individual sets of the plans at the
close of last week’s meeting. The
detailed regulations will follow.
Holding Village is planned
as a traditional neighborhood with mixed
uses, tree-lined streets, houses close
to each other and the streets and a
number of parks and open spaces. It will
be on the western portion of the former
Holding Farm, south of the bypass and
east of South Main Street and the CSX
rail line. The Wake Forest zoning
ordinance has been amended to allow
traditional neighborhood developments.
Hicks did not return calls
about Wake Forest Towne Center. |
