The town of Garland is currently working toward a development project, headed by Corbin Beeson, a real estate agent working with National Land Realty. The exact usage of the property has not yet been disclosed.
Beeson, who is also co-owner of Gritney Group LLC, bought the property, located at 109 North Belgrade Ave., with his business partner Steve Bristow.
“We’ve got right around 9.4 acres there that we’ve talked to the town about,” Beeson said. “We’re not exactly set on what the project is going to look like right now. I think we’re looking more towards a commercial or mixed use project. There’s plenty of housing around here and Sampson County as a whole is more focused within farming and industry, we’d like to stay in line with that.”
While there is residential zoning in the area and a potential housing component is possible, Beeson revealed that the primary focus is for commercial business.
“There is housing zoning that’s there and there might be a small housing component to it,” he explained. “What we are leaning towards is for a commercial spot for businesses to go to have a home to serve Garland as a whole.”
The goal for Beeson is to make good use of the land, which he said was outdated, and unlock its full potential.
“It’s a nice lot as a whole. We saw that someone had came in and tried to do a subdivision, but never really completed it,” he stated. “Our goal is to finish that out and make it into something that a business or the town could have that’s usable, versus old dilapidated buildings that aren’t being used to its full potential. That’s kind of what spurred the investment and where we’ve gotten so far.”
Regarding the sale of the property, Beeson and Garland Mayor Ralph Smith Jr. highlighted the process of how the property became available.
“There was a piece of property that we owned that needed repair and we sold it to them,” Smith explained. “We put it up and held a public hearing for the sale. The guy (Beeson) got the bid he wanted and that’s his plans for it. The previous owner had recently passed away, so I got him in contact with the family because I knew sooner or later they’d (the family) be doing something with it, and that’s how things snowballed from here.”
“In our industry, we work with businesses that are looking to find locations to build on and to serve the community,” Beeson said. “It’s a site that we saw that could be a potential highlight for some of our clients we worked with in the past, so we went to the listing agent to the family that was selling it and worked out a deal with them. Now we’re the owners and are currently improving the property to allow for some sort of business or mixed use situation where someone could come in and make a really nice side out of it.”
Both Beeson and Mayor Smith noted that the development project is still in its infant stages and that changes needed for the zoning will be worked on to help bring the vision that they see for the project to fruition. The property has R-85 zoning, which is used for low-density residential area districts in Sampson County.
“If you look at the town of Garland’s map or any unified development ordinance, the R-85 designation wasn’t the main highlight of the site,” Beeson explained. “Our main highlight is the highway business commercial and trying to do something with that on the road frontage on Belgrade, which is what we’re actively working on. The R-85 does also limit what you can do with the site currently as it stands for the back end. You can do parking lots that need to be 8,500 square feet minimum, which is relatively small. It’s probably too small than what we’d want to do if there were a residential component.”
Smith added that the R-85 zoning limits the size of homes. “He wants to be able to build bigger homes for a residential component, and in order for the retail part to come in there, we’ll have to change it to make sure we could put the retail portion in there,” the mayor said. “He wants to have it where people can have bigger homes with bigger yards. He has a big piece of property, so he’s trying to develop it for those reasons. With R-85, by the time you do the setbacks and those things, you’re limited to the size of the house you can build.”
Mayor Smith sees the property potential for businesses on the front end and residential housing on the back end, but is open to the vision that Beeson has.
“He could change it to all business or all housing,” Smith said. “We’ll work with him as best as we can to accommodate him and let him build whatever he wants to build.”
In terms of how the project can benefit the town, Mayor Smith named two important key aspects. “Population tax base. Whenever I’m out talking to people about the kind of recruiting business here, such as manufacturing jobs, that’s what we need. So far, I haven’t had a lot of luck with that, but I’m working on it and sooner or later I’m going to hit pay dirt on it. When I’m out recruiting, that’s the two things they ask: workforce and housing. It dawned on me one day that if I solve one problem, I automatically solve the other one. You can’t solve one without solving the other, if you get enough workforce, you’ll get enough housing and if you get enough housing, you’ll have enough workforce.”
Beeson shared his thoughts on the town’s vision as well, while also touting the new DMV driver’s license office that the town opened just before Christmas.
“Nothing’s final, I think we’re working with the town’s vision and what people around there would want too,” Beeson concluded. “We’ve met with some of the neighbors and some of the crews around there. Our goal would be in talking with the town and businesses that are interested around there to find out ‘what do you you all want to see and how can we make that happen?’ That’s the business that we’re in. There was some feedback and definitely appreciation from what we found so far in trying to make something of the site and continuing to add to Garland as a whole. Garland has some really good momentum in our opinion.”