A seven-story hotel is taking shape above Raleigh's Village District, and a few miles away, Midtown East keeps adding restaurants and fitness studios to its Wake Forest Road corridor. Together, the two shopping centers show how much money and momentum Regency Centers is pouring into the Triangle right now, even as the company expands across the country.
Village District, the open-air retail plaza near downtown Raleigh, spans 599,428 square feet and draws more than 5.2 million visitors a year, according to bizjournals.com. That same report lists a run of recent lease signings at the property, including Sephora, Ballard Designs, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, Barnes & Noble and Postino WineCafé. Other sources list Village District's square footage differently — a Regency Centers blog post puts it at 599,902 square feet, while The News & Observer reports more than 600,500 square feet — and current occupancy figures for the center were not reconciled across available sources.
The Oberlin Hotel Rises at Village District
The biggest physical change at Village District is The Oberlin Hotel, a seven-story, 153-room property under construction at 501 Woodburn Road. It's being developed as part of Hilton's Curio Collection, according to a Regency Centers blog post, which describes the hotel as including a market-style café, a spacious lounge and a full cocktail bar, along with several presidential suites. Construction was slated to begin in summer 2026 and take approximately two years to complete, per the same post.
Plans for the hotel also include a sixth-floor restaurant called Wren, which is expected to serve Southern-inspired cuisine and craft cocktails from a rooftop venue with a full-service kitchen, according to whatnow.com. That outlet reports the hotel plans to begin accepting reservations in January 2027 — a timeline that runs later than earlier projections tied to the property's groundbreaking.
Midtown East Fills Out Its Tenant Roster
Across town, Midtown East continues building out its mix of retailers along the Wake Forest Road corridor inside Raleigh's beltline, anchored by Wegmans, according to Regency Centers' property listing. The center was originally announced in 2017 as a planned 170,000-square-foot shopping center with 54,000 square feet of additional retail beyond the Wegmans anchor, built on roughly 22 acres Regency Centers acquired in Raleigh's Midtown neighborhood, according to a 2017 news release from investors.regencycenters.com. By early 2019, the center had 12 signed leases covering 140,000 square feet, putting it at 86% leased, as previously reported by The News & Observer.
Village District's tenant momentum lines up with broader numbers Regency Centers posted for 2025. The company increased full-year same-property net operating income by 5.3%, excluding termination fees, and executed roughly 6.8 million square feet of comparable new and renewal leases at a blended cash rent spread of plus 10.8%, according to the company's fourth-quarter and full-year results posted on investors.regencycenters.com. Regency also started about $318 million of development and redevelopment projects during the year and had $597 million in net project costs tied to in-process projects as of December 31, 2025, the same release shows. The company acquired approximately $538 million of shopping centers nationwide during 2025 and reported $4.64 in Nareit FFO per diluted share for the full year.
Why Raleigh Keeps Drawing Investment
The investment activity tracks with Raleigh's broader growth story. The Raleigh-Cary metro area has grown 10.2% since 2020 to roughly 1.6 million people, according to Bisnow, which also reports that Raleigh was designated one of five 2026 star markets for consumer momentum, citing job growth, in-migration and a diversified economy. Placer.ai researchers cited in that report said Raleigh's relatively low median age and strong labor market are fueling demand for premium dining and retail — a dynamic visible in the steady tenant churn at both Village District and Midtown East.
Regency Centers has made similar moves elsewhere in the region. In Charlotte, the company purchased the 542,761-square-foot Blakeney Town Center in 2021, part of what bizjournals.com describes as a broader push by the company to invest in the Southeast through ground-up development, acquisitions and footprint expansion. Those moves, paired with the hotel construction and leasing activity in Raleigh, point to a company treating the Triangle as one of its more active growth markets rather than a mature, static holding.
Several details about both Raleigh properties remain unsettled in the public record. Village District's exact square footage and current leasing rate are reported inconsistently across sources, and the Oberlin Hotel's opening timeline has shifted between projections tied to its groundbreaking and the January 2027 reservation date reported by whatnow.com. As construction continues at Village District and leasing activity carries on at Midtown East, those figures will likely come into sharper focus. The pattern pairs the hotel project at Village District with leasing activity at Midtown East.
