A massive earth-moving project got underway in 2023 on 19 acres on Village Drive at Robeson Street in Fayetteville, near Highland Country Club, but no specific development is planned for the site, the company managing the property said.
The property, owned by Shoppes at Village Green LLC, is being graded to make the topography more usable for development, said Jared Fryer of Village Green Real Estate and Development. Village Green Real Estate manages the 19 acres, he said.
“We’ve had that site on the market for a long time,” Fryer said, citing previous plans for a shopping center. “We’ve had all kinds of people look at it. And the topography of it limited the ‘availability’ of it, for lack of a better term. Because if somebody wanted part of it, you still had to take care of the topography for all of it.”
Part of the land as it runs along Village Drive is high, and part is significantly lower, Fryer said. The grading will make it more uniform, he said, and usable for development.
“We’re trying to get it closer to where it mirrors Village Drive,” he said.
The zoning is community commercial. The city code says that zoning allows for medium- and high-intensity retail, service, and office uses, plus residential uses.
This chunk of land has mostly been vacant for decades, according to aerial imagery records with Cumberland County. Photos show what appears to be a business on the north side of it for a time and a wooded area in the middle. The south side used to have part of the 9-hole golf course of the former Dark Branch Racquet and Swim Club.
Dark Branch used to run along a large swath of Village Drive to Purdue Drive.
The golf course closed in 2007 and the rest of the club in 2009, the Fayetteville Observer reported in 2013.
Fryer and his partner at Village Green, Franklin Clark, have been redeveloping the former swim and racquet club with office buildings and the Meadow Walk neighborhood of single family homes.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
