New six-lane highway to spur and shape growth across southern Wake County and beyond
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Five surging sites worth watching in the Triangle
Aggressive new development is everywhere in the Triangle, but growth can dismantle longtime institutions and neighborhoods. These five locations stand out for the significant change they’re expected to see in 2022 — for better or worse.
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Wake County has more than 1.1 million residents, with dozens more arriving each day, so it may be inevitable that the county’s southern tier will eventually fill with homes and businesses.
But building a six-lane highway through this semi-rural area will accelerate that growth and give it shape. This new stretch of N.C. 540, also known as the Triangle Expressway, will have five interchanges that will become a focus for commercial and residential development and give residents a faster route to Research Triangle Park, Durham and other places in the Triangle.
The new leg isn’t expected to open until the end of 2023 at the earliest, but it’s already influencing land and home sales in southern Wake, according to the county’s planning director, Tim Maloney.
“Developers are noticing it, and they’re looking at available land and they’re looking to develop subdivisions within proximity to it,” Maloney said. “That’s natural.”
Southern Wake was already in transition. The farms, patches of woods and crossroads communities here are interspersed with mobile home parks and small subdivisions, as well as a growing number of new developments with names like Legacy Farm, Brighton Forest and Blaney Farms that refer to a landscape that is disappearing.
Many of the older homes and subdivisions are built on large lots served by wells and septic systems, and that pattern could simply continue in many areas, Maloney said.
But county and town planners will be looking for ways to foster denser development, particularly around the 540 interchanges. Last year, the county adopted a long-range land-use plan that calls for creating “walkable centers,” a more dense mix of homes and businesses near the highway, with sidewalks and greenway trails and a critical mass of people to support mass transit.
“In looking at those interchanges, we knew that large-lot subdivisions on well and septic were not the right thing to do,” Maloney said.
To make the centers happen, towns would need to extend water and sewer service. Two of the five new interchanges — at Holly Springs Road and Fayetteville Road/U.S. 401 — are already on or close to water and sewer service that can support dense development. The other three — at Bells Lake Road, Old Stage Road and N.C. 50 — are not yet but could be in the future, Maloney said.
NC 540 will spur growth beyond Wake
Work on this 18-mile section of the Triangle Expressway began in November 2019. The highway will run from N.C. 55 in Apex, where the pavement ends now, east toward a massive interchange that will connect it with Interstate 40 and U.S. 70, southeast of Garner.
Drivers will pay tolls to use the highway, just as they do on the existing Triangle Expressway between Apex and RTP. The tolls will be used to pay the $2.2 billion this section of the road is expected to cost.
N.C. 540 will give drivers from Johnston and Harnett counties and points beyond a way to and from RTP and the western Triangle without passing through Raleigh. In that way, it could fuel sprawl far beyond southern Wake.
Johnston County was the fastest growing in North Carolina in the 1990s, long before it became clear N.C. 540 would be built. It again had the fastest growth rate in the last decade, hitting 216,000 residents. N.C. 540, and the widening of I-40 between Raleigh and N.C. 42 in the Cleveland community are both in response to that growth and will encourage more.
Like the Raleigh Beltline, the 540 Outer Loop is creating a new geographic boundary, a line between inside the Loop and outside it.
Inside the Loop in southern Wake will be Lakes Wheeler and Benson, the old McCullers Ruritan community, the entire length of Ten-Ten Road, Eagle Ridge Golf Club, Ken’s Korny Corn Maze, Porter Farms and Nursery and most of Cary and Apex.
Just outside the Loop will be Wake Technical Community College’s southern campus, Middle Creek High School, Ball Berries and Produce, Juniper Level Botanic Garden and Plants Delight Nursery, all of Optimist Farm Road and most of the towns of Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina.
Completion of the southern leg of the Triangle Expressway will leave a 10.8-mile stretch of the Outer Loop yet to build. Construction of that leg, between I-40 and I-87 in Knightdale, is expected to begin in 2026 and be finished in 2030, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation.
This story was originally published January 23, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "New six-lane highway to spur and shape growth across southern Wake County and beyond."
