Thousands of acres owned by Corbett Industries Inc. is now on the market, in many cases for the first time in several decades, in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender and four other counties in Southeastern North Carolina.

Of the 17,000 acres for sale, more than 12,400 acres are in Pender County with some overlap in Bladen County, but the offering also includes a more than 840-acre tract in northern New Hanover that sits at Sidbury Road, the foot of Interstate 140 and what will be the Military Cutoff Road Extension. While the Corbett company doesn't need to sell the land, demand for developable land is high right now, said Jason Windham, a broker with Wilmington-based commercial real estate firm Maus, Warwick, Matthews & Co., who is marketing the property.

“Now is a great time, post-recession, that everything’s really on the uptick, especially residential building in the region,” Windham said.

Not a development company, Corbett Industries, one of several Corbett family companies that can trace its roots back to a purchase made by W.A. Corbett in 1926, owns the land because it was needed in the past for timber for various enterprises, from farming to producing veneer slats.

The large New Hanover County tract, named the Gore Tract in marketing materials after a previous owner, would be especially suited for residential development as it is zoned R-15 and “we’re running out of developable land” in New Hanover, Windham said. The list price is $20,000 per acre. A buyer would likely need an adjacent tract of between 200 and 400 acres owned by Corbett Package Co. that isn’t in the same listing but would provide an essential entrance to a potential neighborhood on the Gore Tract, he said.

The other New Hanover property in the offering is made up of several parcels that add up to just under 5 acres, zoned for light industrial uses, around Jel Wade Drive and Castle Hayne Road. Among them is a piece that is about 1.75 acres and amounts to a city block bordered by the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and Bennett Brothers Yachts.

The other property that makes up what are called the Hilton Tracts is bordered by MLK Parkway and the Wilmington Police Department and includes more than 3 acres. 

“It would be a good location for a city park is what our thoughts were, especially with it being in proximity to the police department,” Windham said.

The Hilton Tracts have a list price of $100,000 per acre.

In Pender County, more than 5,000 acres on U.S. 421 is near the Pender Commerce Park in Currie.

"The boom is pushing north on Highway 421, toward Pender County," Windham said of current market conditions and referring to recent announcements about new tenants coming to the commerce park. "We have a tremendous amount of acreage on Highway 421 with over 2.5 miles of road frontage, the majority of which is zoned industrial by Pender County." 

Among the Brunswick County land, 570 acres off Mount Misery Road labeled the Butler and Fergus tracts make up another part of the offering where new residential development could take place in the Leland area. A developer could easily use the land for a neighborhood from which residents could commute to and around Wilmington via I-140, Windham said. It also has some waterfront, sitting on one of the estuaries of the Cape Fear River.

Some of the land is also located in Sampson, Duplin and Columbus counties. More details about the land sale are available on a website set up to market the offering.