600-home mixed-use development advances in buzzing North Carolina town
- Keller Group
- Mar 2
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 29
Plans for hundreds of new homes in a fast-growing Johnston County town are moving full steam ahead as the development team has selected a local homebuilder and site work is set to start in the coming months.
Since first being pitched in April 2024, Local 70, a project formed by a partnership between the respective companies of Edward Holmes Jr. and father-son duo Buddy and Carter Keller, has received the necessary rezoning approval from the Smithfield Town Council. Plans for the project call for just shy of 600 housing units — a mix of townhomes, single-family detached homes and apartments — as well as 75 acres of commercial real estate.
The group, operating through the LLC Smithfield Growth, purchased the land — located on both sides of M Durwood Stephenson Parkway and bordered by U.S. Route 70 Bypass on the east and Booker Dairy Road on the west — in December 2021 for $5 million, according to Johnston County deed records. The site spans 164 acres total.
The developers have tapped Morrisville-based Garman Homes as the lead for the residential side of the project. Representatives of the developers and the homebuilder did not provide estimates for home prices.
Prices for single-family homes in the Smithfield area were around $350,000 in February, according to Doorify MLS, up 11 percent from the same month last year.
Site work will begin in the next quarter and home construction and pre-sales are anticipated at the start of next year. Susan Keller, a partner with Keller Development, told Triangle Business Journal that Local 70 is a "really thoughtful, planned community that blends in modern designs with the history of Smithfield."
"We're very excited about several aspects of Local 70, with the first being that it's sort of a mixed-use plan development, which is new for Smithfield," There are lots of opportunities for different businesses that can contribute to what is already existing in Smithfield. I'm also really excited about our amenities package, which includes a lot of green space and a multi-modal trail."
Keller said there are no concrete plans for the commercial component of the project at the moment, but "we are looking to partner with companies and businesses that will not necessarily compete with what's already there in Smithfield. Rather, we want businesses that would complement what is there or businesses that are currently absent."
Smithfield, which sits along Interstate 95, has been attracting residential and commercial development for years. Last year, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) opened a 620,000-square-foot warehouse in the town as part of a $100 million investment. The company said the site would employ 1,000.
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