Salisbury City Council voted unanimously on Thursday to annex and rezone a 362-acre stretch of land on Peeler Road, clearing the way for a sprawling industrial park that developers say will eventually include six buildings, one of them larger than a million square feet. The site at 611 Peeler Road had been sitting under Rowan County jurisdiction until the vote brought it into city limits and shifted its zoning to the city's Light Industrial district.
Seven Islands Requested the Rezoning, TPA Group Will Market It
The push to bring the property into the city came from Seven Islands Environmental Solutions, which owns the land and requested the annexation and rezoning, according to the Salisbury Post. Atlanta-based TPA Group, identified as the developer responding to requests for proposals on the site, is now positioned to market the property, which The Business Journals reports sits near Interstate 85 in Salisbury, North Carolina.
TPA's plan calls for six buildings total, anchored by a structure exceeding one million square feet, the Post's report states. The timeline laid out to the council has 1.1 million square feet of building space going up by 2028, with another 1.4 million square feet to follow by 2030 — a buildout that, according to the seed reporting from The Business Journals, totals more than 2 million square feet across the site. An earlier Post preview of the project noted that commercial real estate firm CBRE had marketed the still mostly undeveloped land with six proposed buildings ranging from 83,000 square feet up to 1.5 million square feet.
City Pushes Back on Data Center Speculation
As the project drew attention, city staff made a point of telling council members what the development is not: a data center, the Post reported. That clarification came alongside projections that the buildout could generate between $2 million and $2.6 million in tax revenue for the city once fully built out.
Infrastructure capacity was also part of the council's discussion. Salisbury-Rowan Utilities told the city it expects to be able to accommodate the site's water and sewer demands, per the same Post account. Fire officials, meanwhile, estimated the development could eventually require one additional fire inspector, three more firefighters, and another ladder truck to keep pace with the new industrial footprint.
Part of a Broader Industrial Push Along I-85
The Peeler Road approval lands amid a string of large industrial deals stacking up around Rowan County. Just months earlier, Google signed an 88-month lease for an entire building at Overlook 85 Industrial Park in the county and secured first rights to lease an adjacent one million-square-foot building, according to the Charlotte Business Journal. Late last year, Redline purchased 115 acres near Salisbury with plans for close to 870,000 square feet of industrial space spread across multiple buildings, the outlet separately reported.
Salisbury has also backed industrial growth with direct incentives before. In 2024, the city council approved a five-year, $3.14 million incentive grant agreement with RP Salisbury Partners, which had purchased a 92-acre property between Peeler and Webb roads for a planned Class A industrial park outside city limits, according to the Post's earlier coverage.
A city zoning document tied to the Peeler Road parcel indicates the petitioner sought to shift two parcels from their existing Rowan County zoning designations into the City of Salisbury's Light Industrial district as part of the annexation, though the full text of the final approved ordinance was not available for review. Details on the financial or contractual relationship between landowner Seven Islands Environmental Solutions and developer TPA Group have not been made public.
