Major development leaders shared updates and perspectives March 2 on their Wilmington-area projects, from downtown transformations to projects underway near Wrightsville Beach.
 
In addition to Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo, the panel included Brian Eckel, co-founder of Cape Fear Commercial and partner in Cape Fear Development; Andy Hewitt, partner in Soda Pop District development firm Parastream Development; Donna Girardot, chief strategy officer for CIL Capital and chair of the New Hanover County Planning Board; and developer David Swain of Swain & Associates.
 
MAYOR BILL SAFFO
Saffo shared that the city’s purchase of properties in northern downtown has given the city “a seat at the table” to determine what that area’s transformation, dubbed the Gateway Project, could include.
 
The city is working with East West Partners, the same firm that served as Wilmington’s partner in a project to replace a defunct parking deck with the mixed-use building River Place.
 
“This (the Gateway Project) is going to be very similar to that … we will have a mixed-use development there that would involve housing or apartments or condos, would have some parking, would involve a hotel, would involve an office building, and it would also possibly involve a food hall with the concepts that we’re talking about currently that you may have seen in other communities,” Saffo said.
 
DAVID SWAIN
Swain’s Wilmington-based firm is working with South Carolina-based The Beach Company on Center Point, a 1 million-square-foot development on Military Cutoff and Eastwood roads. There, across from an entrance to the Landfall neighborhood and New Hanover County’s Northeast Branch library, grading recently started on the 23-acre site that is expected to hold apartments, retailers, parking structures and a hotel.
 
The N.C. Department of Transportation is using about 3 acres for the extension of Drysdale Drive and an eventual overpass to address traffic at that intersection.
 
Center Point’s plan has changed since Swain initially talked about it at a Power Breakfast three years ago.
 
“It is morphing,” he said. “The world has started to change, specifically related to office buildings.”
 
Plans call for four buildings fronting Military Cutoff Road to include more than 30,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, Swain said.
 
An office building, another 135,000 square feet of retail and a hotel – the brand for which has not yet been identified – is planned for future phases, he said.
 
BRIAN ECKEL
Sharing details about one of his development projects, Eckel and his firm are working with New Hanover County in a public-private partnership, having completed a new 130,000-square-foot government center building that county employees are currently moving into, Eckel said.
 
“They’ve been in the old Marketplace Mall for the last 20 years, which served its purpose,” Eckel said of the government complex off South College Road and Racine Drive.
 
The theme for the government center portion of the redevelopment project “was resiliency and efficiency. They’re coming from an extremely inefficient building. So we wanted to create a new home for them that was extremely efficient. We did that,” he said.
 
As part of the private portion of the development, Eckel’s company plans to build a mixed-use development with 250 apartments on top of retail space.
 
(Read about more of Cape Fear Development's work here) 

ANDY HEWITT
Hewitt talked to the Power Breakfast audience about another transformation, this one in the Soda Pop District in downtown Wilmington. He explained to the crowd that the district can be loosely described as running from 7th to 12th streets between Market and Chestnut with Princess Street acting as the main commercial corridor. A major piece of the district is the former Coca-Cola bottling facility, which Hewitt’s company has turned into an adaptive reuse project.
 
Parastream Development has filled 88% of its adapted space, Hewitt said.
 
“Since 2020, we’ve welcomed 16 new businesses just in our project in the Soda Pop District, not including other people’s properties that they’re working on,” he said.
 
DONNA GIRARDOT
 Girardot said CIL is building and planning integral industrial facilities at the Wilmington International Airport (ILM) Business Park.
 
“What we’re looking at having on the ground within the next 18 months is $250 million worth of investment, four buildings, four parcels and 1.5 million square feet under roof,” Girardot said. “So that is pretty aggressive, but we’re moving forward with the times as fast as we can.”
 
She said the first building will be used for cold storage of pharmaceuticals, and CIL is working with “some of the world’s largest, the nation’s largest, pharmaceutical companies … to provide cold storage for their pharmaceuticals.”
 
The second building will be used to service the Research Triangle Park area of the state and will create a direct route directly to the coast for them for shipping and flexibility and timeliness, Girardot said.