WENDELL - A privately financed five-lane interchange taking shape on U.S. 64/264 is only the most visible sign of big change that will transform sparsely populated farmland into a planned 4,000-home suburb called Wendell Falls.

Wendell Falls Parkway is scheduled to open in spring 2009, about the time the first homeowners move into Wendell Falls. Students will begin attending Wake County's new year-round Lake Myra Elementary School in summer 2009, on a campus surrounded by the county's planned Wendell Falls Park.

WakeMed expects to open a satellite hospital there in fall 2009 for patients from across eastern Wake County.

When the state Department of Transportation opened the U.S. 64/264 Knightdale bypass in 2005, it said it had no plans to add a new exit before 2030. So the developers of Wendell Falls are spending $30 million to build Wendell Falls Parkway and its interchange two miles east of Smithfield Road.

"We tried to address a lot of the concerns people have about developers' not doing their fair share of the work," said Greg Ferguson, a founding partner of Raleigh-based Mercury Development, which is building Wendell Falls.

"We put in the traffic infrastructure up front. We have spent a lot of time working with environmentalists, and we looked years ahead in planning for schools and for open space."

Wake County is planning a park and trail system for 126 wooded acres on the shore of Lake Myra and stretching north along Marks Creek. The county commissioners agreed last year to pay the developers $3 million for the park land.

WakeMed this summer will start building the WakeMed East Healthplex, which will include a 24-hour emergency room, on 10 acres near U.S. 64/264.

"The eastern part of Wake County is probably the most rapidly growing part of the county," said Carolyn Knaup, WakeMed vice president for ambulatory services. "We really feel like this mirrors our mission to bring health care to the neighborhood instead of expecting folks to actually travel" to the hospital.

Ferguson said the first 355 home lots at Wendell Falls will go on sale this fall, with single-family houses expected to cost $240,000 to $450,000. Less expensive townhouses will follow in a few years, along with houses selling for about $1 million.

He said he aims for buildout at Wendell Falls, with 4,000 homes and about 10,000 residents, in six or seven years. That would triple the size of Wendell, which now has almost 5,000 residents. The town has annexed Wendell Falls.

The new community is expected to consume 1.5 million gallons of water a day from the city of Raleigh, which is struggling to meet current needs with its Falls Lake supply. Wendell Falls is laying 24-inch water mains that eventually will carry water from two future sources for eastern Wake, Lake Benson and the planned Little River reservoir.

Ferguson said Wendell Falls will tap wells to irrigate common areas and will encourage builders to use water conservation measures.

Transportation planners say that, besides serving as Wendell Falls' front door, the parkway interchange will be a new conduit for northern Johnston County commuters who clog two-lane Smithfield Road every morning.

Wendell straddles U.S. 64 Business, which shrinks to two lanes as it crawls through the town center four miles east of Wendell Falls. The parkway will provide a westward link to Knightdale-Eagle Rock Road and a new backdoor entry from U.S. 64/264 to Wendell.

Much of that traffic will pass the small red-brick home of Ruby and Clarence Richardson, retired farmers in their 80s. The four-lane Wendell Falls Parkway will stretch almost two miles from the highway to Martin Pond Road, where the Richardsons live.

"I know progress is going to come, but we don't like it," Ruby Richardson said. "We're happy in the quietness of the country.

Town meets country

"We like to be out of town. Of course, it's going to look now like the town has come to us," she said.

The project displaced a 19th-century farmhouse built by Clarence Richardson's grandfather, Dr. William E. Richardson, a Civil War veteran who originally owned much of the nearly 1,400 acres that form Wendell Falls. The developers recently moved the house near a family cemetery, and they plan to donate it to the town for restoration.

The Richardsons live close beside Martin Pond Road and a dirt farm road named for their family.

"My problem is, they're going to add a turn lane right here in front of my house," Ruby Richardson said. "It's going to take all of my crape myrtles. It's a little too close."

Richardson Road will be realigned and paved as a two-lane extension of the parkway, and part of the new route into Wendell.

"We hope to make that a much more scenic entrance into Wendell than we currently have," Mayor Harold Broadwell said.

He thinks Wendell Falls will provide a boost for the whole town.

"In some respects," Broadwell said, "we're the last frontier out here with respect to development."