Mixed-Use Developments and Manufacturing Plants Transform North Carolina’s Chatham County
By Nick Leverett
CoStar
October 19, 2023
As the population grows and new jobs are created in Chatham County, North Carolina, developers are racing to deliver new retail, housing and amenities for the area’s current and future residents.
Chatham County is located southwest of Raleigh and Durham and has a population of almost 80,000 people. Although it is less populous than the Research Triangle’s core counties of Wake County, Durham County and Orange County, Chatham is growing at a faster rate than their neighboring, larger counties.
Population growth is expected to continue as a pair of major industrial facilities are slated to create thousands of new jobs in the county. This summer, Vietnamese electric vehicle company VinFast broke ground on an automotive factory at the Triangle Innovation Point megasite in Chatham County. The $2 billion facility is scheduled to begin production in 2025, and VinFast has said that it will ultimately employ up to 7,500 people.
Meanwhile, locally headquartered semiconductor company Wolfspeed plans to build the world’s largest silicon carbide materials factory in the county. The company said that facility will create 1,800 jobs by 2030.
Chatham County towns, such as Pittsboro and Siler City, have long been bedroom communities for the larger cities of Raleigh and Durham. Until recently, the county contained few apartments or amenities. However, employees for the new facilities will need places to live and shop, and developers are seeking to fill those demands.
There were no market-rate apartments built in Chatham County from 2008 through 2019. The only complexes built during that time were senior housing and affordable housing properties.
Since 2020 though, developers have built almost 800 new apartments in the county, more than doubling the area’s inventory in just a few years. There are another 560 units currently under construction. Chatham County’s vacancy rate rose sharply earlier this year as new apartments were completed, but it has been declining in the second half of the year as people move into the new units. It remains to be seen if developers will be able to build enough housing for workers as the plants begin operations.
With the county’s rising population and growing employment base, developers are increasingly looking to create live-work-play environments in the area. The most prominent development is Chatham Park, a 7,100-acre, master-planned development that contains multiple mixed-use projects. Chatham Park’s developers have said that it is the largest development of its kind on the East Coast and will have 22,000 residences in addition to millions of square feet of office, research, retail and community space at full build-out.
Chatham Park already contains hundreds of residences, thousands of square feet of office space and multiple shopping centers. That includes Mosaic, a 44-acre mixed-use development that is intended to serve as a gateway to Chatham Park. Additionally, Northwood Landing is a 92-acre shopping center located near Mosiac that is anchored by a 44,000-square-foot Lowes Foods grocery store that opened earlier this year.
The Chatham County market is deeper than people realize, and traditional trade areas in the 3- or 5-mile radius do not capture the full population of potential customers, Hunter Stewart, a vice president and principal with Lee & Associates who leases properties in Mosaic and Northwood Landing, told CoStar.
The area has historically been underserved in retail, and customers are willing to drive further for their shopping needs since, in the past, some would drive as far as Chapel Hill, which is 25 miles from Northwood Landing, he said.
As the various projects in Chatham Park achieve critical mass, more tenants and brokers understand the area’s potential and are interested in operating in the area, said Stewart. Five new retail tenants were recently announced for Northwood Landing: Dunkin’, FirstHealth of the Carolinas, Haw River Animal Hospital, Hubie’s Express Car Wash and Zaxby’s.
Lee & Associates Raleigh-Durham leads retail leasing for Northwood Landing.