Chatham County Manager Bryan Thompson signed a confidentiality agreement with Fearrington Land Holdings LLC on June 4, 2026, to privately discuss donating 8.5 acres of land that could be used for affordable housing. The arrangement didn’t last. By late August, the developer pulled out of the deal after a public-records request forced the county to release roughly 900 pages of environmental studies — including findings about a contaminated former hog-waste lagoon sitting on the very land in question.
How the Deal Was Struck, and Why It Fell Apart
According to the News & Observer, the county’s attorney and its finance officer both signed off on the nondisclosure agreement before Thompson put his name on it. The NDA was meant to cover talks about an 8.5-acre donation that the county and a nonprofit partner could use to build affordable housing — a use Fearrington Land Holdings reportedly requested confidentiality protections for, since the information could be considered proprietary. The arrangement unraveled after Smart Chatham members filed a public records request, and the county released the trove of environmental studies in response, prompting the developer to terminate the NDA.
Thompson said the agreement itself required the release of information once a public-records request came in, the outlet reports. Nick Robinson, who represents Fearrington Property Development LLC, announced at a September 1 planning board hearing in Pittsboro that the NDA had been terminated. Jeremy Rose of Smart Chatham told the paper his group considered the confidentiality deal a little odd, given that the land in question sits beside a development already drawing heavy public scrutiny.
What the Released Records Show
The roughly 900 pages, completed between 2020 and 2024, document a former family farm that once held a hog-waste lagoon. Per the same account, the lagoon served about 75 hogs for roughly 20 years before beginning to fall out of use more than 17 years ago; it has sat fallow for six years. Previous studies found the lagoon is contaminated and poses significant challenges, and they recommended banning future well-water and groundwater use on the property. A 100-year floodplain also runs across the northwestern corner of the site, and the same studies warned that future wastewater spray fields could expand the area of potential contamination near nearby wetlands. If the county ultimately accepts the donated acreage, it would have to pay for cleanup of the contaminated soil, the report notes.
A Housing Project Already Under the Microscope
The 8.5-acre donation is tied to the broader Fearrington Preserve project, located south of Andrews Store Road and Briar Chapel near U.S. 15-501. Fearrington Property Development LLC has proposed what the developer calls a compact community — though accounts of its size diverge. The News & Observer describes 531 homes and townhomes on 365 forested acres and wetlands, while Chatham Journal Newspaper describes a 574-lot First Plat on 365 acres as part of two subdivision plans totaling about 522 acres and 657 lots altogether; earlier public discussions reportedly referenced around 630 units. Chapelboro.com has separately described the proposal as a 383-acre compact community, while a rezoning request reviewed by Chatham Journal lists approximately 371.822 acres moving from R-1 Residential to a Conditional District Compact Community designation. The developer is also offering to donate land for 72 affordable townhomes, separate from the 8.5-acre parcel at the center of the terminated NDA.
Chatham County’s compact-community zoning district is designed for denser residential neighborhoods built around mixed-use village centers meant to preserve rural land and character elsewhere. Fearrington Preserve has faced community criticism and planning-staff questions since January over compact-community rules, traffic, flooding and environmentally sensitive areas along Pokeberry Creek, the News & Observer reports. Chatham Journal adds that public concerns have centered on traffic, wastewater, flooding, environmental protection and the broader effect of dense development along the Andrews Store Road corridor, and that a traffic-impact analysis determined a left-turn lane is warranted at the development’s primary access point on that road. For developments of 50 lots or more, the county also requires an Environmental Impact Assessment subject to peer review, per Chatham Journal.
Robinson told the planning board that Smart Chatham’s opposition had revealed genuine concerns but also included allegations he called irresponsible and false, according to the News & Observer. The Chatham County Planning Board was slated to recommend approval or denial of the Fearrington Preserve project on October 6, after which the matter is expected to return to county commissioners for a final vote.
What North Carolina Law Says About NDAs and Public Records
State law allows local governments to hold closed-door discussions and sign NDAs covering trade secrets, business or industrial project locations or expansions, and real estate purchases, the News & Observer reports. But that confidentiality has limits: the North Carolina General Assembly approved a 2023 law reminding local governments that otherwise public records must be released if a citizen or media request comes in, with trade secrets as the only exemption. Governing boards must still hold a public hearing and vote on related decisions, and must release closed-door minutes once there’s no longer a reason to keep them private.
A separate analysis from Coates’ Canons at the UNC School of Government notes that public-records statutes determine what must be disclosed, and those requirements cannot be overridden by a private contract. The same analysis, attributed to UNC School of Government researchers Tyler Mulligan and Crista Cuccaro, says developers typically seek NDAs to protect proprietary information and keep economic-development negotiations private — a dynamic that played out directly in Chatham County’s short-lived agreement with Fearrington Land Holdings.
The episode comes against a backdrop of real housing pressure in the county. A 2017 Chatham County assessment estimated a gap of nearly 2,000 affordable rental units, with 66% of renter households earning less than 80% of area median income considered cost-burdened, according to the ncIMPACT Initiative. Statewide, North Carolina faced a shortage of 207,837 affordable rental units for extremely low-income households as of 2023, the same research group reports.
