Kannapolis City Council has cleared a conditional rezoning for Afton Ridge, a light-industrial park planned as four buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet on 78 acres off Corl Road.
The November 10 vote was unanimous, the Salisbury Post reported. Florida-based McCraney Property is the developer, targeting 6122, 6229 and 6331 Corl Road for a park of up to 1.1 million square feet that could take tenants from 20,000 square feet to larger users, according to a Charlotte Business Journal report by Cooper Metts.
Why The Board Vote Was Not The Last One
The Kannapolis Planning Board heard the rezoning on October 20 and split 4–2, with two members abstaining or absent. That was a simple majority. It was not the three-fourths vote required to approve the rezoning without sending it upstairs.
Falling short of that supermajority is what put Afton Ridge on the City Council agenda. Council then approved the measure unanimously. The documented path is procedural: a board tally that could not finish the job, and a council vote that did.
Four Buildings And A Required New Entrance
The 78-acre property is accessible off Corl Road. The rezoning also requires a new entrance from Glen Afton Boulevard. That is a condition of approval, not a report that the driveway is already in the ground.
The Post described 1.1 million square feet split across four buildings of varying size. The Business Journal frames the same plan as up to 1.1 million square feet, with space for occupants starting at 20,000 square feet and running up to larger users. Read together, it is a multi-building park pitched at a range of industrial tenants, not a single named company already signed.
The approved site will not be permitted as a data center, recycling center, various animal service facilities, or gardens. Conditional rezoning is the tool Kannapolis used to write those limits onto this property. Gardens and server halls do not usually share a sentence. Here they share a ban list.
A Regional Shortage Of Large Spec Space
The local vote lands in a tighter regional market than the one developers were describing a few years ago. On April 22, the Charlotte Business Journal reported that absorption had outpaced new deliveries for five straight quarters in Charlotte's industrial market. Real estate experts in that account worried a shortage of large speculative buildings could cause the region to miss major tenants.
Afton Ridge is not yet one of those buildings. The November 10 action is a zoning decision on Corl Road. The April warning was about large speculative space the region has been filling faster than it has been delivering. The two facts sit next to each other on the calendar. They do not, by themselves, put a tenant in a building that has not been reported as started.
Kannapolis Already Knows This Building Type
Million-square-foot industrial plans are not new to the city. Trinity Capital Advisors and Barings are partnering on 85 Exchange, expected to include 1.3 million square feet of industrial space, the Business Journal reported in 2023. Phase one of that project was expected to deliver in early 2024.
More recently, Google leased a 729,872-square-foot warehouse and logistics facility at Overlook 85 Industrial Park on Old Beatty Ford Road, the Charlotte Observer reported on April 28. The lease runs 88 months and covers warehousing and logistics for Google's supply chain. The city said Hudson Capital Properties built the building and Foundry Commercial marketed it, and stressed that the operation would not be a data center.
Afton Ridge's conditions draw a similar line, this time in the zoning itself: no data center on the Corl Road site, in the same excluded column as recycling centers, various animal service facilities, and gardens. The requirement with a street name attached is more ordinary. The development will have to take a new entrance from Glen Afton Boulevard.
