Plans call for overhauling Cary Towne Center with a new look and a new name
The 87-acre mall was built in 1979, was last redeveloped in 1992 and has been an aging and partially occupied structure since.
The Cary Towne Center will now get a major facelift as developers announced plans to demolish it, rename it and replace it with a modern mixed-use commercial center with residential buildings.
As a massive revitalized development, Carolina Yards will be 4.5 million square feet featuring hotel, residential, office and commercial space with around 10 acres of outdoor walkable and landscaped space. The development is located on Cary Towne Boulevard and Walnut Street near Interstate 40 and U.S. 1.
“It’s really going to be a full redevelopment and a full reimagining,” said Jason Davis, the managing principal of the developer Turnbridge Equities. “It’s mixed-use experience that is walkable, is outdoors and provides different types of spaces for events, meetings, for passive recreation and active recreation.”
New York City-based Turnbridge Equities and Dallas-based Denali Properties will be developing the project after acquiring the property in January 2019. They were granted rezoning for the site last December by the Cary Town Council.
“I am absolutely thrilled that this is coming to what my daughter refers to as ‘the dying mall,’” council member Jennifer Robinson said at the time. “This is going to be such a vast improvement, and it’s going to be so good for our area.”
It’s slated to have 1,800 residential units, feature up to 450 hotel rooms, seven mid-rise office buildings around six-stories, 360,000 square feet of retail with 160,000 available for lease. The current Belk department store and Dave & Buster’s will remain and be renovated.
The project will likely be valued at several hundred million dollars, Davis said.
The project will include a mix of housing units with plans for 175 townhomes and 1,600 other units, such as apartments and condos. Up to three different hotels are planned to be built on the property.
“We’re trying to create a development that is going to feel very organic and authentic and one the way we’ve done that is we’ve brought in a whole suite of different architects from across the country,” said Davis.
Carolina Yards’ design is envisioned as being optimized for outdoor dining and having ample space for social distancing in consideration of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s a really big advantage that we are probably the first major project that has really been largely designed post-COVID,” said Davis. “Some of the features will be offering a lot of outdoor dining, wider sidewalks, parks, plazas, promenades. ... Our office buildings will have designated outdoor space.”
Carolina Yards aims to break ground in 2021 with a first phase with over 1.2 million square feet of mixed-use, including residential, office, retail and hotel space likely ready by the end of 2022, Davis said.
Turnbridge Equities’ other large stake in Triangle real estate is the historic Creamery building on Glenwood Avenue in downtown Raleigh. They filed a rezoning request with the city in June to build up to 40 stories high there.
This story was originally published October 2, 2020 at 6:15 AM.
