A development firm new to the Wilmington area has restarted plans for an apartment community on Independence Boulevard near Echo Farms.

Woodfield Investments is proposing 254 apartments in four buildings on 15 acres at 3828 and 3970 Independence Blvd., with preliminary site plans labeled Woodfield Wilmington.

In September 2014, Symphony Properties, developers of Sawmill Point apartments in downtown Wilmington, had proposed 256 apartments on the land before dropping out of the project.

Now the property is under contract with Woodfield, a company that has multi-family projects in the Triangle area and Charlotte, along with Charleston and Greenville, South Carolina, and the Washington D.C. metro area.

“We’ve always kept an eye on Wilmington and we think it’s got great fundamentals with education, health care, tourism. So really a lot of great fundamentals not unlike the Charleston market,” said Scott Underwood, a partner in Woodfield Investments. “We feel like we found a great site to match the market.”

In addition to three, three-story buildings and one four-story building, the preliminary plans for the Woodfield apartments include a pool, fitness center, yoga room and a sky terrace. The terrace is envisioned as an indoor-outdoor space, on the fourth floor of the largest apartment building, where residents could congregate and socialize, Underwood said.

With projects like The Pointe at Barclay, a movie theater-anchored commercial center, along with a development expected to be anchored by one of the largest Harris Teeter grocery stores in the state at Carolina Beach Road and Independence Boulevard, “the walkability factor for this site is fantastic,” Underwood said.   

The Woodfield apartment community plans are expected to be discussed at the city of Wilmington’s Technical Review Committee meeting that starts at 8:30 a.m. Dec. 1, in the fourth-floor technology conference room at 305 Chestnut St.

Underwood said company officials hope to get started on the apartments by the second quarter of 2017.