‘Boom town’: More than 145 acres of land up for sale in Chatham’s Pittsboro
Once a rural outpost, Chatham County’s Pittsboro is booming.
In the wake of Disney’s plans to build a “Storyliving” planned community inside Chatham Park, investors Govind and Prateek Chandak – the father-son team behind Raleigh-based The Focus Properties – are selling two parcels nearby at the intersection of U.S. 64 and U.S. 15-501, just outside of Pittsboro’s historic downtown.
Called “Bellemont Place,” the 145-acre plot of mostly wooded land is adjacent to Bellemont Station, a 140,000-square-foot shopping center anchored by Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Chatham Park, the 8,500-acre master-planned community that’s currently under development.
A 1,500-acre neighborhood called Asteria, part of the Storyliving by Disney brand, was announced in December, the latest in a string of new projects planned for the former textile town close to the Haw River that’s about 20 minutes south of Chapel Hill and 20 minutes west of Apex.
Tim Smith and Julian “Bubba” Rawl, co-founders of Cary-based Preston Development, are Chatham Park’s developers.
“No question. We’re grafting off their success for this deal,” said Chester Allen, an executive vice president at real estate company CBRE, who is working on the sale for The Focus Properties.
“Those announcements, and others, only help validate this property and [submarket],” he continued. “It’s already a great story. It just makes it better.”
The sale, which was first reported by the Triangle Business Journal, doesn’t come with a price tag. Allen expects multiple offers.
“Most of my listings are not priced,” Allen added. “They’ll be determined by the market demand. It’s a big site, so I anticipate the full spectrum.”
CBRE is accepting offers through Feb. 14.
‘Shovel ready’
The LLC tied to the Chandaks bought the two parcels for $2.1 million in 2014, according to Chatham County deed records. Tax records show an appraised value of $2.335 million.
Allen said it’s currently going through the rezoning process to become a mixed-used planned community with up to 189 single-family homes, 195 townhomes and 300 additional apartments.
“The [sellers] speculatively invested in this. They’re not going to develop this, but they understand the value of having something to ‘shovel-ready’,” Allen said.
Future water and sewer utilities are also tentatively in place after the town of Pittsboro agreed to merge its water and wastewater facilities with Sanford last July. That extends the town’s current system that is at capacity.
It’s expected to open in the fourth quarter of this year, the listing says, on a “first-come, first-serve” basis.
The sellers are retaining a 2.5-acre commercial parcel entitled for 96,000 square feet of retail, 72,00 -square feet of office, and a 120-room hotel.
They would consider subdividing and selling individual sections. The buyers would be responsible for the site plan, construction drawings and final permits, Allen said.
Changing landscape
Once a vast expanse of undeveloped land, Chatham County’s rural landscape has quickly given way to construction in recent years.
From 2010 to 2020, Pittsboro’s population jumped by 800 to 4,564, according to Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program. That’s up 21.25%. It’s only expected to climb as new projects continue to fill the pipeline.
Among them: Vietnamese carmaker VinFast is building a multibillion-dollar production facility on a 2,150-acre “megasite” in Moncure that it says will employ up to 7,500 workers. In Siler City, another 19 miles west of Pittsboro, Wolfspeed, a Durham silicon chip manufacturer, is pouring $5 billion into the rural county and creating 1,800 jobs.
Pittsboro’s farmlands give way to suburban sprawl and ‘walkable’ communities
