by Ely Portillo
If you spend most of your time in uptown or the surrounding neighborhoods, it’s easy to miss the boom that’s happening further south in Steele Creek.
But off Steele Creek Road, in the Berewick master-planned community, excavators are pushing piles of red dirt and buyers are snapping up new houses as fast as construction workers can build them. Retail and other commercial buildings are following, filling in what had been blank spots. Nearby, the 28273 zip code is one of the hottest in the nation for home sales, emphasizing that while in-town developments attract more attention, the death of the suburbs has been greatly exaggerated.
“It’s mushrooming quickly,” said Brian Roth, vice president of marketing at Pappas Properties, Berewick’s developer, on a recent tour of the site. Although the current boom feels frenzied, Pappas has been working on the site since 1999, and the first residents moved in more than a decade ago to those houses in the mid-2000s.
The commercial and multifamily development is newer. In addition to the houses and townhouses, Solis Berewick, a 275-unit apartment development, is now open, and just moved in its first residents. A 125-room Hampton Inn & Suites is planning to open next summer, and a Courtyard by Marriott is in rezoning. New restaurants, including Mod Pizza, McAlister’s Deli, an Italian concept called Enrico’s and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop are coming to the town center. An age-restricted project for residents 55 and older is also under contract, Roth said, and more apartments are planned.
Berewick, with five national homebuilders at work, is set to see its 2,000th home sale later this summer. The community will likely sell 500 houses this year, and is closing in on its full build-out, which will total about 3,000 houses, townhouses and apartments. Roth said they expect to hit that mark by the end of 2018.
The average sales price: $297,000, with one home pushing past the $400,000 mark.