By Kayli Thompson – Staff Writer, Triangle Business Journal
Oct 21, 2024, Updated Oct 21, 2024 1:53pm EDT
A 30-acre walkable development in north Durham is progressing with a focus on community.
Construction has started on Latta Park, a mixed-use planned development with homes and retail that will be anchored by Publix. The project is led by Crosland Southeast and Tri Pointe Homes (NYSE: TPH). It sits east of Highway 157 and north of the Eno River.
Site work has started on the 20-acre residential portion with the first townhomes for sale by late 2025. There will be 176 townhomes with estimated pricing in the high $300,000s. The homes will be two and three stories and range from 1,650 square feet to 2,300 square feet.
Five percent of the units, nine or 10 homes, will be made affordable to those making 60 percent of the area median income.
Crosland Southeast will construct the 10-acre retail portion, which will include a 42,240-square-foot Publix, 12,580 square feet of retail space, outdoor dining, a courtyard, a food truck terrace, community park, public art and a 10-foot-wide multi-use path.
The retail space will have room for eight tenants and Crosland is aiming to have four of those be local food and beverage concepts.
Crosland is investing $30 million to develop the retail and perform infrastructure improvements.
Austin Williams, partner with Crosland, said the company will start vertical construction on the retail in the first quarter of 2025 with delivery for tenant upfits a year later. The developer is anticipating having businesses open late spring 2026. Pre-leasing has already started.
Chip Lanier and Jenn Olevitch-Roberson of Lee and Associates are handling the retail leasing.
Latta Park will be at the corner of Guess Road and Latta Road.
“We’ve made a commitment to the community to lean heavily toward local concepts. … Lee and Associates' focus is to find strong Durham owner-operators for food and beverage,” Williams said. “We perceive this area north of the Eno River to be essentially, grossly underserved with good retail offerings, and we feel like the market would absorb meaningfully more retail than we're delivering, so we're putting a dent in it. We consider this to be a quaint neighborhood-oriented project.”
South of the development is the Willowdaile Shopping Center. It has been on the CMBS watchlist for defaulting on its loan in 2021 and is about 78 percent leased. Tenants there include the anchor tenant Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, Family Dollar, Starbucks and Willowdaile Family Dentistry.
The food truck terrace at Latta Park will be able to accommodate two trucks at a time.
As far as the community park is concerned, Williams said the developer has put together a group of neighbors to give recommendations for how the park is designed and if it includes any active uses. The park will be on the corner of Guess and Latta roads.
Latta Park will feature four restaurants and outdoor seating.
An approved rezoning for a previously rejected development from a different developer included a significant amount of traffic improvements. Williams said Crosland made a commitment with its site plan approval to follow through on those improvements, which will cost about $2 million.
The infrastructure changes include adding another turn lane at the Latta and Guess roads intersection along with extending both turn lanes, widening the intersection, extending Autumn Drive to connect to Latta and Guess roads and constructing 10-foot-wide multi-use paths.
