HOLLY SPRINGS — This town’s subdivisions and strip malls are booming, but its downtown hasn’t seen new construction since 2006.

Now town officials are making a big investment to draw developers’ attention to their fledgling village center. The town is taking on a stormwater management project – with ditches and filtering ponds to make it cheaper for developers to build downtown.

During heavy rain, the downtown stormwater system will filter the runoff from 20 acres of downtown land – which means the developers of that land won’t have to build drainage systems themselves. Instead of sacrificing land and money, developers could route runoff to the filtration area, which is funded by taxpayers.

“They don’t always have space for our stormwater requirements,” said Town Engineer Kendra Parrish.

The town has put down $80,000 for the project design and is seeking grants to defray the cost. It will use some “fee-in-lieu” money that downtown developers have contributed instead of building their own stormwater devices.

One developer is in line to take advantage of the stormwater project. Sand10 Properties wants to build almost 46,000 square feet of retail and office space on North Main Street. The town and Sand10 likely will swap land for the project.

Kenney: 919-460-2608 or twitter.com/KenneyOnCary