Carrollton developer settles in for a big project
Stuart Parks, who is developing Kernersville's "village within a village," Carrollton, on N.C. 66, said Tuesday that the list of new projects on the books in Kernersville isn't so much a growth surge as it is a planning surge.
In a conversation at his small office on a side-street in Winston-Salem, the soft-spoken Parks talked about the big development that begins a new phase in Kernersville's housing and commercial growth.
At least three high-profile developments are planned, including his, all made possible by new utilities and planning guidelines that clearly define what kind of development the city wants for its future.
Kenersville planners and the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners made it easy to sell a well-planned development, Parks said.
"The land was there and the town and the county had already envisioned the future," he said, by proactively planning for every detail of the kind of growth it wanted. "It was very easy for us to slide in in a collaborative way with them."
His company, PM Development, is just now grading the first stage of the $200 million project.
The 500-acre Carrollton will include:
-- 400 apartments
-- 125 acres of high-density, for-sale housing
-- 500,000 square feet of retail space in four phases: a grocery neighborhood center; a pedestrian-scale town center; a bigger store anchor and several retail/office parcels
-- 70 acres of workplace/office development.
Parks, a Kernersville native, will recruit a variety of developers and builders as the projects proceed, which he describes as "layered." And he expects it to take many years.
Carrollton has already been five years in the planning stages, from assembling land to starting up the earth-movers.
But "it's still going to require a lot of patience" Parks said.