Wake Forest unveils mixed-use development plans
The Grounds is a proposed 100-acre mixed-use development between Wake Forest's football and basketball venues
Wake Forest Univ. and developers Carter and Front Street Capital have unveiled plans for the first phase of the mixed-use development called The Grounds that will sit between Allegacy Federal Credit Union Stadium and Lawrence Joel Coliseum. The developers intend to sign a ground lease with Wake Forest, which owns the 100-acre site (and the arena and football stadium) that already draws roughly 750,000 visitors per year to roughly a billion dollars’ worth of athletic and entertainment venues.
“It’s really about the communal experience and old friends getting together, so having better amenities and destinations for before and after contests and special events absolutely will improve attendance, help traffic flow,” said Wake Forest AD John Currie.
The Grounds will replace a series of vacant lots and parking areas with a pedestrian-focused 40,000-square-foot retail village connected to Allegacy Stadium by a new Deacon Walk gateway. The retail village will feature boutique shops and local and regional chef-driven restaurants, with residential units situated above the ground floor retail. A 100,000-square-foot office building will be situated closest to the stadium; the university has committed to leasing the office space and will likely have a team store-like presence in the retail area, too. A $35M grant awarded to Winston-Salem by the state of North Carolina will enable a creek running through the site to be rehabilitated and beautified with a landscaped walking trail that connects to Wake’s main campus. The grant will also fund the alteration of Deacon Boulevard, currently a straight road that will be curved around the new development. A 240-unit, 500-bed residential community will sit on the other side of the rehabbed creek.
The project will officially kick off with a groundbreaking in December; the development team is targeting the end of summer 2026 for the office building and retail village to be complete, and summer of 2027 for the multi-family development to open. Some of the key infrastructure projects will be finished ahead of the 2025 college football season. Subsequent phases, including potentially a hotel, will be announced as the first phase comes online, Currie said. The university didn’t disclose how much it and the developers were investing in The Grounds. But Currie said that he expects roughly more than a billion dollars of new investment in the vicinity over the next decade due to the development.
The Grounds will bring to life an area that hosts annually 250 events, including the annual Winston-Salem Open ATP Tour tennis event. The David Couch Ballpark, Wake Forest Tennis Center and Winston-Salem Fairgrounds and Arena are also located nearby. The land was previously home to a series of music clubs and restaurants, whose fortunes faded when the RJ Reynolds tobacco company moved its operations to the city’s outskirts. The university acquired the land in the late 2000s but delayed developing it due to the financial crisis, then turned its attention to development projects in downtown Winston-Salem. Currie was hired as Wake’s AD in 2019 and began thinking about a potential development of the unproductive stretch of land between the school’s two main sports venues; when Dr. Susan Wente was hired as the school’s new president in 2021, she immediately supported the effort moving forward.
The university is leading the development project, with athletic department input. Currie co-chairs the effort with the university’s Jackie Travisano (EVP & CFO), Chris Kiwus (VP/Facilities, Real Estate, & Planning) and Brian White (General Counsel). Brailsford & Dunlavey and Cushman Wakefield helped Wake Forest with initial feasibility studies and project direction. The university then issued an RFQ, followed by an RFP, which was won by Carter and Winston-Salem-based Front Street Capital. Carter’s sports-adjacent mixed-use projects include The Banks in Cincinnati -- which sits between the Reds and Bengals’ riverfront stadiums -- and the Georgia State Summerhill development in downtown Atlanta that’s converted a handful of former 1996 Summer Olympic venues into a mixed-use development. Carter and Front Street spent the last year working with Nelson, an architecture firm with previous sports-related work at The Battery and the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, on the development’s masterplan design. Winston-Salem-based agency, The Variable, helped create the development’s name.
By: Bret McCormick, Sports Business Journal