Drift Coffee & Kitchen, K38 Baja Mexican Grill and Boombalatti’s Homemade Ice Cream are among a slate of local favorites expanding to Carolina Beach as part of Proximity Carolina Beach, a mixed-use project with 250 residential units and 35,000 square feet of commercial space.  

Other locally-based businesses, including Island Passage, Sweetwater Surf Shop and Axis Fitness, will lease space at Proximity along with Riko’s Pizza, a Connecticut-based chain. The project is also gearing up to welcome residents starting next month, said Brian Eckel, a partner with project developer Cape Fear Development.

Proximity Carolina Beach broke ground last July and has been years in the making, Eckel said Thursday. Even before the roughly 10-acre site at 1000 and 906 N. Lake Park Blvd. was rezoned for the Proximity project, developers hosted more than 30 meetings with stakeholders and other community members. Those conversations helped shape project plans, according to Eckel.

“We heard over and over, we want fitness, and we want a resort-style pool,” Eckel said. “We actually oversized our pool from our typical community pool, and we're going to be selling memberships here for the summer of 2025 to the residents of Carolina Beach.”

At more than 4,500 square feet, the complex’s fitness center is oversized for an apartment complex, allowing the public to buy passes for the gym operated by Axis Fitness.

Some of the complex’s 250 residential units are nearing completion with residents starting to move in on Sept. 13, according to Eckel. Proximity offers a range of 15 floorplans, including one- and two-bedroom units along with carriage house-style units with garages and live-work units.

The complex has already leased 30 residential units or roughly 12% of the complex, Eckel said. Tenants include a mix of young professionals looking to rent instead of buy, retirees and those from the Raleigh and Charlotte markets looking to own a second home at the beach.

Amenities include an outdoor kitchen space with firepits, cabanas around the pool, a dog park, a beach shuttle for residents and what Eckel calls a “floating meditation deck” built around one of the property’s Live Oak trees. The site also includes a tie-in to the Island Greenway, a multi-use path that will be extended through the Proximity property.

Cape Fear Development took a unique approach when it came to leasing Proximity’s commercial space. Instead of advertising the space on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) or putting up a “For Lease” sign, they brainstormed the types of tenants they wanted to see and worked from there.

“We went through what are the best categories that we’d like to have as tenants,” Eckel said, “and what are our ideal tenants?”

The approach allowed them to handpick users they thought would provide the best tenant mix, said Julia Eckel, an associate broker with Cape Fear Commercial, and Brian Eckel’s daughter.

Julia Eckel and Patrick Riley, a vice president at Cape Fear Commercial, worked on Proximity’s commercial leasing.

“We're just trying to find the best operators in the market to come in here, who we know will be successful and we won't see turnover,” Riley said. “They're going to be here 10, 20 years from now.”

The commercial tenants will start upfitting their spaces on Dec. 1 and are expected to open in the first quarter of 2025, according to Brian Eckel. Four commercial spaces are currently open, Riley said, although a few are close to signing leases. 

Behind the businesses, developers have plans to bring in landscaping and an amphitheater to create a recreation space that could be used for yoga, cornhole, fitness classes and concerts. The complex will see a phased resident move-in with a full buildout expected in January 2025.

Joe Benson, a member of the Carolina Beach Town Council, said the businesses the project is bringing to Carolina Beach will provide more choices for the town’s residents.

“For those of us who call Carolina Beach home, there are additional reasons we don’t have to go OTB,” he said. “We now have more choice and when all is said and done, we’ll have features on the island that we don’t have now.”