UNC Health expands in Pittsboro’s Chatham Park with $15.9M land purchase

UNC Health is expanding its footprint in Chatham County.

The health-care provider bought 43 acres inside Chatham Park this month for $15.9 million. The 8,500-acre development on the east side of Pittsboro is currently home to 1,000 residents and is expected to bring tens of thousands more in the coming years.

The parcel, located just south of the U.S. 64 Bypass and the Chatham Park Way transportation routes, can accommodate up to 700,000 square feet of medical care facilities.

It will add to UNC Health’s existing sites in Chatham Park – including UNC Chatham Park Medical Office, which opened in 2016, and the SECU Jim and Betsy Bryan Hospice Home, which launched in 2017 with 10 rooms.

The provider also runs UNC Health Chatham Hospital in Siler City, about a 22-minute drive west of Pittsboro.

“We’ve built a substantial presence at Chatham Park,” said Janet Hadar, UNC Hospitals president. The latest acquisition “reaffirms our commitment” to providing “much-needed medical care” for that region, she added.

Changing landscape

Once a vast expanse of undeveloped land, Chatham County’s rural landscape of farms and forest has quickly given way to construction in recent years, making it one of the fastest-growing counties in the state.

Data from the U.S. Census showed its population jumped more than 20% over the past 10 years, to nearly 80,000 residents, as growth from Chapel Hill and Cary spills into its two biggest towns, Pittsboro and Siler City.

That figure is expected to climb as new projects 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.

Adding additional health care is “another step” to building a multi-faceted community, said Tim Smith and Julian “Bubba” Rawl of Peston Development, the developers behind Chatham Park.

“Our regional mega manufacturing sites will bring thousands of families, jobs and economic activity to this area of Chatham County,” Smith said. “We want Chatham Park to be the top choice for families to relocate and plant roots.”

The community already includes Pittsboro’s Knight Farm community park, over 200,000 feet of office and retail space, and a soon-to-open 121-room Hampton Inn.

A future Chatham County elementary school and a new 34,000-square-foot Chatham Park YMCA are also in the works.

“The groundwork is being placed,” Rawl said. “It’s an exciting time.”