Episode 96: Building a Town Center
As with other episodes of Municipal Equation, this one originated from a casual, hallway conversation with a local government official. In this instance, podcast host Ben Brown was chatting at a League event with Mayor TJ Cawley of Morrisville, who'd noted the progress there in a major project to essentially build a downtown from scratch, as Morrisville up to this point hasn't had one. The idea is to create that convergence of residence, business variety, fun and identity that can bring locals together and give outsiders a new destination. Several years ago, we'd looked at how Kannapolis re-energized from hard times in part by remaking its downtown district, and so we brought Morrisville leaders onto Municipal Equation to ask how they imagined their project (a public-private pursuit called Morrisville Town Center), how they've involved the public, and how they intend to fill it with a distinctly local vibe.
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Transcript
From the North Carolina League of Municipalities, this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns. Hello, and welcome to Municipal Equation, the podcast about cities and towns brought to you by the North Carolina League of Municipalities online at nclm.org. My name is Ben Brown. So, here's a question or rather let me set up a question. Plenty of towns in North Carolina and around the country developed in a way that might add up to a thriving community with all kinds of good business and opportunity. But what if it lacks a downtown, like a city that doesn't have a downtown or didn't develop with one in the way that we typically think of downtowns, where it's a great mix of energies with different kinds of businesses and people who live in the apartments upstairs and the historic post office and big crosswalks with groups of pedestrians, all of whom have different places to be, a sort of classic downtown. Not every town developed that way. Not every town has one. So what about developing one? If a town wants one, just creating a downtown for a town that is totally successful and lively in their own right otherwise, but but just doesn't have what you'd specifically call the classic downtown? Well, on this episode, we're carrying on the tradition of focusing on a topic that just came up in hallway conversation, with one of our municipal officials. In this case, it was TJ Cawley, the mayor of Morrisville. At a conference a little while back, he and I were catching up between sessions, and I asked what the latest exciting news was out of Morrisville. And one of the one of the things he mentioned, the main thing he mentioned, that mayor Cawley mentioned was their town center project. And I knew I had to do an episode about it because, essentially, Morrisville is building a downtown for itself, something for the people to enjoy and be proud of, but also the kind of space that brings people together in from the outside as well and helps, establish a new sense of place and identity. The Morrisville Town Center project is our focus today, and we're gonna have mayor Cawley as well as town manager Brandon Zutima on this episode to talk about it as they're now preparing for a groundbreaking. This follows a ton of work on their part and a long history, but now they're getting ready to break ground on this new town center, this new downtown. So several years ago, I did a communications project with the city of Kannapolis, and this came to mind because in Kannapolis, they did something similar. They reestablished or essentially built a new downtown in their effort to recover and thrive following some hard times in the early two thousands, when the big employer there closed. And and they, the city government, had to make some hard moves to make sure that they had something good in their future. And they went for it, and they built it. The situation and circumstances on the ground for Morrisville are a little bit different from Kannapolis, so I wanted to zoom in on Morrisville and what they're doing, how they're doing it, why they're doing this to begin with, and what's ahead. As categorically speaking, these projects are perhaps not quite as rare as they used to be, but certainly take hard work and knowledge. And that's what we're digging into today, how it's done. Something to learn from. So So let's kick it off with Mayor TJ Cawley from the resident perspective, and we'll also hear from town manager Brandon Zutima of Morrisville, North Carolina on what it takes to build a new town center.
Very happy to have with us today Mayor TJ Cawley of Morrisville, North Carolina. Someone I've known for many years now in the course of working with local governments.
Mayor, thank you so much for joining us on Municipal Equation. Yeah. Glad to be here. This is always a lot of fun.
So what kind of town is Morrisville? Just to set some context, you know, size, location, attributes, give us the one sheet on Morrisville for anybody who might not be familiar.
So we're nine and a half square miles. We're about 10 miles west of Raleigh, in Wake County, one of the 12 municipalities there. We started off in the eighties with about 250 people. We're just the town just a little bit below the airport. So we had lots of flex space and industrial coming near the airport and then people discovered that that's actually a great place to live here in Morrisville. We used to be called the heart of the triangle because we're so central to Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. So we've really grown as people realize that this is a great place to live when you're working up at RTP. We also have one of the largest, class a office parks in the triangle, in Perimeter Park. So, we really changed from a really small sleepy little suburb to a place where, a lot of people come. We have lots of great restaurants and things like that And, we've grown to 32,000 people. We're not gonna grow that much more. We've run out of space, frankly. But it's a great place to come and visit.
And so this this town center project, you know, it's it's been in progress for for years. It goes a good way back. But now, as we film this episode, you guys are about to actually break ground on the the Town Center District. And in my mind, I've I've kind of been using the name Town Center or Town Center District sort of interchangeably with the word downtown or maybe the concept of downtown, which is, you know, more of a generic word potentially, but it brings to mind all kinds of, you know, kind of specific things, you know, a downtown district. Is is that off base? Is is is that project essentially to kind of make sort of a a downtown of sorts for Morrisville or does Morrisville already have an historic downtown site or, you know, where does this kind of figure in with that kind of conversation?
Yeah. There's a lot to unpack there, but, yeah. We, had a lot of kind of cottages along the railroad there. Lots of factory workers and things like that, kind of mill houses. And those have sort of gone into disrepair and we've been developing the rest of the Town Center District in general. When we look at the maps these days, our Town Center District, which is kind of more of a a campus, which which is gonna be a compass all the way from Morrisville Carpenter Road all the way up to McCrimmon, was about the size of the town way back when. So that that really small thing that the town used to be, that's gonna essentially be our downtown now. So we're gonna have the town center green, and that'll have, acres of land, some boutique retail around it, including an amphitheater so we can have performances. We'll have lots of our festivals and things right there. And then we're gonna have Carolina Street will be our downtown Main Street because that never really happened in Morrisville, like Chapel Hill Road 54 that parallels the railroad. But that never really became a downtown street that, like, you think of with the retail on the First Floor, apartments above and things like that. You see things like that in Apex, Holly Springs, they have really nice downtowns that you look at it, it's like, oh, that's a nice downtown. That's kind of classic North Carolina. That never happened for us organically. So working with a private developer to create that sort of from scratch, from the ground up. We're making that happen. We're buying all the land that we need, and we're gonna go ahead and create that. And that'll take a couple of phases in a few years, but we're very excited to take this vision and actually make it a reality because this has been something we've been trying to make happen for decades. Many councils have approached us, and now we really have the momentum to make it happen.
And and sort of you mentioned the the the classic downtown. You're just kinda what comes to mind if you think of different sized towns and sort of their the the heart of the the the community or whatever it is. The the word downtown or town center, as I mentioned, you know, it brings all kinds of things to mind. And you mentioned some of these things too, kind of a confluence of things, you know, different uses, a mix of business and restaurants and living space and walking areas and kind of in a way, I guess, sort of a center of local pride. It's it's got a feeling that different people can connect with together. Is is that part of the conversation? Like, I'm sure, you know, economics and business and are are certainly part of it. But what about for the the spirit of the town and sense of identity and and just for the everyday folks out there? You know, why is this a good project for the the sake of community?
This is, really important to us to have a place, a central gathering space. So the motto of our town is live connected, live well. So this is really gonna help people become connected. We just had our Samorrisville event. It was national Samorris day. So we changed the name of the town to Samorrisville in one day. We've been doing that for a number of years. We actually use a proclamation to actually change the town's name. So whenever we do things like that, we create shared experiences which create shared memories and that strengthens our community. Because when people have things in common, things that they can look back towards and look for up forward to, they look forward to coming together. So, my vision for the town center and the town green has always been that on a Saturday morning, you can walk or take your bike on the greenways. We'll have one greenway going up each side of our town center district. So it's gonna be really easy to connect without cars. You go there. You maybe go to the library, get some books, go to a story time with your children and things like that. Then you go over to the green, you hang out. We have multiple play areas around the town green. We'll have some hammocks to hang out in. Then you go ahead and maybe get a coffee in the coffee shop, get a pastry, then go out and play some more, meet some friends. Then later on, you can have some lunch. There's gonna be lots of different things. We're looking to really program this Towne Green so that there's lots of things going on all the time. It's gonna be right near our new parks and rec department. We're relocating that closer to the downtown. So it's just gonna be a really active space. We've been really lucky. A few years ago, the Western Wake Farmers Market was not able to stay in their space over on further in Cary on Marshall Carpenter Road, more in West Cary. So we were able to work with them and now they've been the Western Wake Farmers Market in Morrisville for a number of years now. And we've moved them temporarily away from the town center because we have to build the town center. But that is a place that people come every Saturday from eight till twelve for fresh local produce. And then when this town center is ready, we're gonna move them back into the town center. So that's gonna bring even more people every day. Oh, every Saturday. But we want this town center to be something that people go to seven days a week. If you go down any afternoon, Town Hall Drive has lots of people just walking up and down. We have a greenway right there. So it's a very active space already, and we are very fortunate that Wake County gave us a Morrisville community library also, which is a big draw. Hundreds of people go through our library every day, and they'll be able to take their books right over to the green and hang out, meet friends, have some coffee.
So with this ultimately being something for the community and community spirit and togetherness and momentum, I I imagine the town did or has done a good amount of public outreach and opportunities for the people who live there to express their thoughts on how this should go and what the end result looks like or feels like. How is public involvement and, you know, being mayor, you're, you know, obviously, also a resident of Morrisville. How has public involvement shaped this project?
People really want to make sure it's a place with the boutique retail. They're not looking for chain restaurants and things like that. So that was something that we heard loud loud and clear. They wanted a nice green grassy area that's large enough for the kids to play and come to. Just everything about it is gonna meet the needs of our community. We don't really have any kind of stage anywhere in town. Now this will give a stage so people can just I don't know if you've been to the North Hills Midtown Park. Oh, yeah. The stage and park is there just all the time. So this is kind of a smaller version of that. Our, land will also be a little bit sloped, so it'll be a natural kind of amphitheater feel, in that space. So and the residents, they're very excited. Really looking forward to it because we have lots of great parks all connected by greenways. But this will really be the iconic place that when you think of Morrisville, this is what you're gonna think of, and this is what where everyone's gonna gather.
So that that that brings to mind another question about, you know, the the the sort of style and feel of it and how the the identity, you know, is is gonna feel like Morrisville and not just sort of outside chains and outside money and so on. So, you know, Morrisville in terms of development, I mean, you know, you you wanna grow and develop responsibly in a way that suits the community with the space you have. And, you know, creating this district adds a a new flare to that. But but maintaining the vibe, I guess, that Morrisville already has, sounds like it was definitely an an active value or an active pursuit. Like, for example, is there a bullet point about maintaining a small town feel or remaining true to the character of the people? Is is that kind of how this sort of came out or or was, expressed by the community? Or it seems like that involves kind of striking a balance of some kind with bringing in things that are gonna sustain the area, but also be, you know, of Morrisville.
Yeah. You said sustain, and sustainability is really important to our community. So we're gonna make sure that we're trying to maintain as many of the trees as we can and have some shaded space and things like that. We have always been even as we've grown, we've kept our small town charm and our connection with each other. That's what's been really nice. Like I said, there's always people walking along our greenways and along our sidewalks. A great example of this is down at the bottom of what we're thinking of as our town hall district or town hall campus. We're gonna be having a dog park just opening up. And the initial plans showed just kinda clear cutting everything to create a big open space for the dogs. And we pushed back on that. We said, let's keep all the trees. We want a shaded area. One's being a lot more natural. So if you were to go down to the end of Town Hall Drive, we're gonna be having the, ribbon cutting for that just in the next few weeks. You'll see that this is it's a fenced in group of trees where the dogs will play and the people have a chance to relax. We don't have to create another shelter because there's already shelter there. So I think it's really important that we're keeping Morrisville and its sustainability and its green. When people come from the West Coast, they're like, you're so green here. You keep all your trees. We're really fighting the good fight to make sure that we're keeping Morrisville as green and as sustainable and as sustainable and as family friendly as possible.
So there there are plenty of other towns around North Carolina that might be great for this kind of development or have the opportunity and and the space to do something like this. And I know everywhere is different. Circumstances can vary, of course. But generally speaking, is there any anything that that kind of came up in the the process or any advice that might be helpful, something you've observed in the progression of this project that you think is maybe worth sharing or, you know, with other comparable towns that might get into the space of thinking about pursuing a project like this?
I think it's really important to find the right partner. We had a couple of different people respond to our RFP and, we ended up with a local developer called Singh Development. They've already done some work in the area and we feel that it's really a true partnership. It's not about just making the profit and things like that. They're working with us and trying to keep the character like maybe having an m right in the middle of one of the intersections, trying to introduce the m throughout the entire project. They understand what we're looking for and that takes a lot of time with our staff. They're meeting weekly. They're trying to make sure that everyone's on the same page, singing from the same hymnal, and then they bring back ideas and the council takes a look at it. We tweak some things. We try to make sure that it's gonna meet the residents' needs and it's just it's really about getting the good partner. And we worked with, DFI, Development Finance Initiative with the UNC School of Government. Mhmm. Can't say enough about them. They've been with us for many years getting this project off the ground. And, they're they bring a lot of expertise and a lot of wisdom and insight into how to develop public private partnerships. This is our our really our first and largest public private partnership that the town has ever done. And there's some learning to be done, and I think we've come we're coming through it really well, and we're very pleased with what we think is gonna be really iconic for the region.
And we'll go now to Morrisville town manager Brandon Zudama for the professional staff take on this project.
Alright. Welcoming to the podcast Brandon Zudama. He's the town manager of Morrisville. Brandon, thank you for being here. No. Good afternoon and thank you for having me. Well, first, could you tell us a little bit about your time with Morrisville or your government experience overall, you know, your background, how long you've been town manager with Morrisville, just to kinda catch us up.
So I guess I am in my thirty second year of local government. I spent the first twenty six or so years in law enforcement. Last ten of that was as the chief of police in Garner, just down the road in Wake County. I joined the town of Morrisville at the 2019 as an assistant town manager. Was promoted to deputy town manager, and then became the town manager, about two years ago, '23, when my former manager Martha Page retired.
And so the this town center project that we're, talking about today, I I think I have a pretty good idea at this point what it is and why it is very generally. But, could you explain it in your own words, just kinda from the Morrisville perspective, what is the town center project and why is it worth the effort to do, just basically speaking?
So the the town center is the downtown that just never existed or never evolved in Morrisville. You know, we grew from a a train stop to a pocket of commercial, a pocket of residential, and those pockets continue to grow, but never logically into a downtown area or a downtown core. So this has been talked about for probably close to thirty years in the town that the logic was we should have a downtown. And so as early as 2007, the town council at that point adopted a town center plan. So, interestingly that when we get phase one, completed with construction, it will be twenty years from the day that they or the days that they adopted that town center plan. And that plan has not changed really conceptually since that time. So other councils have talked about it. I think the real work on it began in the late twenty teens, had gone out for an RFP and then really picked up. So I joined the town in November 2019 and was sort of assigned to take the lead on this project. We were out for getting ready to go out for, RFQ at that point to get some folks that would be interested in our project. And the project was again, to create a destination in Morrisville, not only for our residents, but for our visitors and to draw people from other communities and to give people, I think, something to think about when they hear Morrisville. So, you know, I think right now we are pretty well known for cricket. We're we're somewhat the cricket capital of the East, but we also wanted to be known for if you're thinking of something to do on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon. Oh, hey, I'm gonna go to the town center in Morrisville because they've got amenities, they've got shops, they've got this amazing green, they're gonna have shows and art and other things going on. So that's really the project is to develop a downtown, really that's a transformational project, excuse me, I'm sorry, For our community to develop, a new park that can seat probably 2,500 people. Again, with a stage, we'll be able to put on local shows, regional, perhaps even national shows. This park is gonna have some unique amenities. It's going to have some cottage retail. So eight units that are about twelve fifty square feet. So smaller boutique y, with due respect to all the, mattress and cell phone companies out there, not looking for one of those, looking for, you know, maybe a bike shop, maybe a bakery or a brewery, things that are unique to Morrisville and that people would want to come to. So we're activating that space, you know, really seven days a week. And probably not twenty four hours a day, but for a lot of those hours in the day where you might think about it for coffee, for lunch, for evening, just time out, you know, under the stars and and relaxing with your family, coming to a show, all of those sort of things. So that's the the project. That's what we're trying to create here.
And and so the project, as you say, it's it's got some history to it at this point. And I've I've heard of other towns just kind of generally speaking doing things that are maybe similar in one way or another in terms of building or finding a private partner to help build what is essentially a new gathering place, a downtown of sorts even. The quickest one that comes to mind for me is is what Kannapolis did. Huge revitalization out of some really hard times there. The the mill closure, I think, was in the early two thousands and the intention that followed to literally rebuild a a place of community, buying into its downtown area and building something new that they could, you know, thrive with and become an inviting place of opportunity versus just, you know, kicking by and letting the future unfold on its own. That Kannapolis project, you know, even though the circumstances are a bit different here and there, that's the first one that comes to mind in terms of just building a new town center for the people. And I I know the elements of this project in Morrisville go back a good way too. But is this a a thing that happens more than I realize, a local government kinda taking the lead in in some way on building a new downtown or its first downtown or a town center? Have have you come across other things kinda like this,
similar to what you're doing in Mooresville? I I think you're seeing more and more of this, and you're seeing it sometimes in new communities that sprout up, but more often you're seeing it as part of revitalization. Interesting, you would mention Kannapolis. So one of our partners on this project is DFI, the development finance initiative out of the UNC school of government. And so part of our work in gearing up for this project, we visited Kannapolis to see exactly what they had done and meet with their staff and understand and learn, you know, what had worked for them, what didn't work for them. So, I think it's similar. Again, they were more of a revitalization where we're sort of coming out of the ground, but but similar interests, similar goals for the community. So, yeah, I think this is happening in different scopes. I mean, if you look at our neighbors, Cary, you know, their new downtown park, which is amazing. They think they've done a lot of work with their downtown area, trying to bring people back to that. You see this in, you know, in other areas, in other states, very familiar with a project down in Georgia, that was happening. So that the International City County Managers Association went to one of the the topical groups was about them doing basically their version of a town center. So, got to hear about that, talk with their staff again, shared notes, shared thoughts, what are we doing? How's it working? So, I think there's a lot of this is as people, particularly communities our size are really trying to hold on to that small town feel, even though we're becoming a medium sized community, medium sized town, we don't wanna lose that comfort, that friendliness that, hey, that's just a nice place to go and visit, relax, you know, grab a bite to eat, grab a drink on the weekend, whatever that might be. And so as things around us in the community are exploding, you know, we're getting strong into biotech and life sciences and other things. This is a piece that we can still look at sort of what Morrisville has been more as a community and more as a smaller town even though the bigger town is growing around us.
Yeah. I I like what you said too about, you know, maintaining the the the small town feel or the the character that's there. And thinking about the the the will of the people and kind of what they wanna see out of all of this, you know, obviously, that's that's a big variable for government in terms of shaping something like this. In in what, different kinds of ways did the town go about public input and giving residents the opportunity to to speak on this kind of project? And what did you guys gather from all of that?
So, you know, there were there was work done back in 2007, you know, when this was all developed as far as what were the people interested, what did they wanna see there. And then since I've been involved, we've done a number of community outreach. We visited HOAs, we visited Rotary, we visited other groups to share, you know, here's what we're envisioning, what are your thoughts, what would you like to see there, how would that work? We've done community surveys, we have done community meetings. So anytime there's a place to pop a tent in a table, we've tried to be there gathering that input and trying to figure out, what would be the best for the community? What are we trying to accomplish with this? And I think we're getting there. And then, you know, this also in our most recent budget process, our communications department was fantastic in helping us reach out to the community and evaluate, you know, what was their interest? What was important to them in our community? And not surprisingly public safety number one on that list. Right? But number two and three were thrivable living neighborhoods and quality of life. And so we're building that with the town center. You know, we're we're gonna provide a higher quality of life in a place that people can come to and relax. And, you know, one of our emphasis is also on it being multimodal. So, you know, yeah, you can drive and park there, but you can bike there, you can walk there, you know, you can take the smart shuttle, you can Uber, all these different ways to get there through the connectedness in our community and even beyond our community because of partnerships with Cary and Raleigh and Wake County. You can jump on one of our green ways and go, I think, until you've got no more go in you, which is fantastic.
And so this is a public private partnership as well, which, you know, certainly when you get a good private partner, a lot opens up in terms of getting, you know, great mileage out of the the public investment. But but getting to the point of a good private partner for a project like this, what what does that kinda take in this day and age? Is the private sector eager to work with the public sector on projects like this? Or what's been Morrisfield's experience, and understanding in terms of partnering with a private entity to achieve a goal of of this scale?
Sure. Can't understate the importance of the right public partner or excuse me, private partner for us as the public. So we went through a process. We had three different groups, submit proposals for the town center back in 2020. And we ultimately selected a group named Singh Development LLC. They have offices right here in Cary, A stone's throw from Morrisville. They're they're actually a Michigan based company, but they have family members that live in the town of Morrisville. So they really, I think, struck council. I think I can speak for them with their personal approach to this and their commitment to this partnership. And it's not about for them just making money. Of course, they're an entity. They need to make some money to survive, right? But it's also about doing the right thing for this community, supporting this community. You know, one of their key stakeholders in the family wants a place for her children to be able to come and play. So that's a unique type of investment. And so we've been very pleased with that partnership. So we have worked, you know, very, very closely with them now for really five years, through this process. And they've been amazing partners. We've developed, you know, good working relationships. I think we've also developed a lot of trust, which is not easy to do and didn't, you know, happen overnight. But over the course of dozens of conversations with them and them with counsel with us, that trust has really developed that we all have the same goal, which is building this destination and building this place for people to want to come and gather and enjoy the time and be in Morrisville. So they've been really good partners. You know, we actually I think part of what got them selected was that they took a look beyond what we'd even put into our request and they went further and they showed us that there was a way to do this park in the first phase, which wasn't necessarily envisioned originally. And they've been very creative working with us. So they're a really good group. And again, to your point, they they are critical to this process and have been really, really good partners.
And so this is the kind of thing. And you mentioned some, you know, nothing this big comes without, you know, any kind of challenge. But instead of, you know, just just trying to highlight, you know, certain challenges or or things to get past, you know, this is the kind of thing, just as you've been discussing it, it it and maybe you've already done this, but it feels like the kind of thing that you could give a a presentation on to fellow city managers and town managers across the state from how the project, you know, was envisioned all the way to it actually becoming a reality and getting to the groundbreaking point. What what kinds of advice would you give to a fellow town manager whose whose town or whose community is thinking about, you know, maybe just entertaining this kind of idea? I know there's a big difference between that and actually, you know, getting started on it and getting done. But, but but just your experience with the Town Center project, if a comparable town to Morrisville said this is something we might wanna do, what early advice would you give me? What what what comes to mind?
So I think first is, you know, really make sure that you know what you're getting into and what you're trying to accomplish and recognize that if you think it's gonna take two years, it's gonna take four. And if you think it's gonna cost x, it's probably gonna cost two times x, just between working everything out and the way the market fluctuates and other things. I would encourage, you know, other managers to reach out to people, myself, Kannapolis, others that have done this, get those lessons learned, but also recognize that there is no, like, handbook for doing this. You know, there there's the statute that exists that we have to follow. There's local rules we have to follow. But, you know, this is our first significant public private partnership. It's also Singh's first significant public private partnership. So we have learned a ton, along the way about how that works. And, you know, I think making sure that you allocate a lot of time, for understanding that this is, you know, not a quick process. And, of course, generally, when government's involved, you know, we intentionally do some things slowly because of who we are and taxpayer dollars and things like that. But when you start involving then a private partner, and then again, we've been fortunate to work with DFI, but then, of course, there's a ton of attorney work to do, and then there's other parties involved. So there's there's a lot to it that I think you wanna make sure you go in as eyes open as you can, but then also recognize that it's unique to every community. Because we, by no means, did what Kannapolis did, and the next person or city won't do what Morrisville did because it's unique to where you are and who you are and what your circumstances are. I think I would encourage anyone that's interested in thinking about this type of project, first and foremost, to make sure that there is council support. And I would say even beyond support, council excitement about doing this type of project, because it's gonna be challenging. There are gonna be really hard conversations at times when there's gonna be questions about should we keep going. And you need to pulse you know, you need to muscle through that, but I think you only do that by having that together plan and that commitment and that excitement from everybody that we're gonna get this done. And then I think you also wanna make sure that you have, a council and staff and a partner that understand what a public private partnership is, what it can do, what it can't do, because, you know, I think there's a lot of things that we would hope would have hoped could have been done to ease this process, but the statute doesn't always allow for that. So you've gotta be very creative, but you've also gotta understand what the rules are, what the limitations are, and how you can work through those, so that, of course, you're you're following the statutes, you're following the law and your local ordinances, but you're also finding a path to success.
So what what is the the timeline like, at this point? Do you guys have a groundbreaking straight ahead and then that's that's work on phase one, if I understand it right? What what's what's what's ahead?
So we anticipate a groundbreaking this fall, so that we will get started on phase one a, which is, again, our top green apologize. And then the multifamily and the parking deck that will be built by our partners. And then from that point, we need to have conversations about, Phase 1B, which we have some potential partners for, that will be done by saying that's a part of our agreement. And then beyond that, we also have still have some property to purchase for full build out. So the full town center project is gonna be approximately 25 acres. And right now, we're starting on approximately the first 11. So there's still this size of a project to come. It may not be all in one phase. So we've got to, acquire I think we're down to 10 or 11 properties that are all privately held right now, that we are slowly working through and having conversations. And, again, I think the way that we dealt with that was also important because we haven't come in and said, you know, you need to go where else. We haven't discussed any of the you know, no eminent domain, none of those tools. We've really just had the opportunity to work with homeowners who we've heard about the project and said, hey, would you be interested? Or, hey, I'm just moving. Would you like I heard you're doing something. Would you consider buying it? And so we've had a lot of success that way, in acquiring a lot of that property. So we still have to acquire additional property. And then we will, I hope, be able to continue to work with DFI to figure out what is the public private partnership that works in future phases. You know, what do we contribute in a future phase? There's been some conversation that may be a community center, that would serve multiple purposes for the town and that makes good sense to put in this area. But then what else comes with that and how do we factor that into know, the modeling, the fun modeling, around or a pro form a around making a future phase or phases work in that regard. And that remind, I wanna jump back to one thing, a question you asked earlier about, you know, advice of how to handle this is start thinking today about all the things you have to do and can do incrementally to be ready for when you actually enter that public private partnership. So folks long before I joined the town had the foresight to expand our stormwater capacity right across the street from this project. They had the foresight to acquire properties. They had the foresight to do other improvements. They had the foresight to bring a Wake County Library to this site knowing what was coming and that that would be a help in drawing people to this area. So it shouldn't all be a, we're gonna start today and be done in three years, you absolutely will not. But if you start today with the plan of we're gonna spend three or four years developing options and being ready for it, and then we're gonna get into the actual part public private partnership and construction and other things. I think that's also a really important part of this.
What about, the the occupancy? And you mentioned maybe the the the kind of business that the people wanna see there. Does that take recruitment or modeling of some kind? Or is it just, you know, if if you build it, they will come type thing? Well, we hope we build it, they will come. But, no, it absolutely takes some work. And so we're probably
six to twelve months away from really getting into that with our partners. So, you know, Singh will manage, they will actually own those cottage retail buildings and then there's some other commercial involved with this space. So they will own that and control that. But we will certainly be partnering with them to help draw people into that. I mean, I get calls occasionally now, hey, heard about this. When is it? What are you interested in? So we've got a working list of people we think may be willing to come. You know, we've also worked with Singh, for example, that we are gonna lease about 4,000 square feet when this first opens because that helps them with their pro form a and helps them with their loan. Right? If they can demonstrate to the loan the lender that they have a tenant, and in this case, a pretty reliable tenant, you know, that helps them get their loans. So that's part of this partnership that, you know, we wouldn't do that, of course, for a private entity, but that is part of the benefit of this public private partnership. We can help each other out, and we can do things like that to get that going. And then we'll certainly be partnering with them to try to identify some of the right businesses to come and join this project.
Well, I appreciate that. And this is an awesome amount of detail. Is is there anything I didn't ask about that you think is important or something I didn't even know to ask? Or any final thoughts you you wanna leave us in, this conversation?
So I think, you know, it it for managers, probably, it becomes it's a town wide project. I mean, when I think of all the departments that have been involved in developing this project, you know, you've got the obvious ones. Right? Your engineering department, your inspections department, in this case, our parks department, because it's gonna be a park. But, you know, we've also got public works heavily involved that have to maintain this. They'll have to work with this. We've involved the police department in terms of special event planning and security. We've involved the fire department to make sure that they can get their overwhelmingly huge apparatus where it needs to be within this facility, if heaven forbid it were needed. And it really goes across the gambit of almost all, I mean, finance, of course, is involved. So I I think so far, the only department I can't engage is HR, but we will as we get closer because we're gonna need staff for this. And then, of course, you know, I'm sitting here with our communications staff and they've been integral in doing things like this and helping us with the communications plan, you know, with advertising and sharing the message as well.
Brandon Zutima, thank you so much for joining us on Municipal Equation. Really appreciate this. Congrats on getting to this point, and, looking forward to seeing how it goes.
Thank you again for your time. Appreciate that. And please come join us this fall, and we'll be putting a shovel in the ground.
Thanks for watching or listening if you're just on the classic audio version of the show. So a quick reminder that you can also watch this podcast like a TV show. All members of the North Carolina League of Municipalities get our monthly need to know newsletter, which has links to the video and audio versions of Municipal Equation, the podcast about cities and towns. And, of course, you can also find it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you get your podcasts. You'll find us there. We've just been speaking with the leaders of Morrisville, North Carolina. I'd like to thank them for their time and hopefully the dialogue included some things of relevance to you or some things you've been wondering or ideas that you might have from your own communities. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions or feedback about this episode. My name is Ben Brown, and you can email me at bbrown@nclm.org. Again, my name is Ben Brown, and my email is bbrown@nclm.org. N c l m .org is the website of the North Carolina League of Municipalities. You can also find my contact info there. Hope you enjoyed this episode and please reach out with your thoughts and ideas because they might inspire future episodes. I really wanna know about the things that your town hall is working on to adapt to what people expect in their communities. Otherwise, I'll catch you on the next one. Thanks for being with us on Municipal Equation.