In addition to new homes, several new businesses are on the way soon to a 4,500-acre Leland community.

Some of the latest in the line-up for the Villages at Brunswick Forest, a 160-acre town center off U.S. 17 that serves as the commercial portion of the Brunswick Forest mixed-use development, include a craft beer and wine establishment, an Irish pub, an optometerist, a homebuilder's design center, ATMC, Berry Financial Group and Farm Bureau Insurance.

The last three bought property last year from Brunswick Forest to establish a presence in the center, said Alan Kerry, president of Lord Baltimore Properties, the developer of Brunswick Forest.

As part of an update on the development, Kerry shared the changes coming to the Villages at Brunswick Forest with a group of real estate professionals at the Cape Fear Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) luncheon. The session was held last week in The Forest Fine Food & Spirits restaurant at the Cape Fear National golf course clubhouse within the development.

"It provides the services that our residents need, and it's our front door," Kerry said, explaining the importance of the Villages. "We have bucked all the national trends. When I say that, we have opened up three different strip areas, and we're going to a fourth now . . . and we have opened each one of them 100 percent pre-leased."

While ATMC will establish a retail storefront and Berry Financial Group and Farm Bureau Insurance are building their own space, Brunswick Forest developers are about five weeks away from breaking ground on a 10,000-square-foot commercial building with retail tenants on the bottom floor and offices on the top, Kerry said. The space will house a new design center for one of the development's homebuilders, the optometerist, a new location for Slainte Irish Pub, and Flights, the craft beer and wine establishment.

"What we're doing is we're going at it very methodically, very carefully to make sure that two things happen: No. 1, we service the residents. What do they need? . . .the other thing we do is, we don't want to hurt our current tenants," Kerry said, explaining the development's approach to new commercial tenants. "They're here to help us, so I don't want to hurt them."

To read more about changes at Brunswick Forest and the Villages at Brunswick Forest, pick up a copy of the April 10 print edition of the Greater Wilmington Business Journal.