A new, large Harris Teeter grocery store with a fuel station could be on the way to Carolina Beach Road.

A developer is proposing to build a retail center with a 76,000-square-foot Harris Teeter, two 8,000-square-foot retail buildings, outparcels and the fuel station on land in the 3800 and 3900 blocks of Carolina Beach Road near the intersection of Carolina Beach Road and Independence Boulevard in Wilmington, according to planning documents.

Developer Dean Scarafoni, president and founder of Live Oak Development Company, said an agreement is in place with Harris Teeter for what could be one of the largest Harris Teeter stores in North Carolina. But he also stressed that the plan is just a proposal right now and the agreement and project would be reliant upon the outcome of a rezoning request for the property and other city requirements.

A conditional district rezoning for the land involved, from R-15 residential to community business, conditional district, that would allow the development, called The Crossroads at Independence on site plans, is on the agenda for the Wilmington Planning Commission’s meeting Aug. 3.

Scarafoni said the property makes sense for a Harris Teeter-anchored commercial project.

“It’s in between RiverLights and the Camerons’ new mixed-use project [Barclay]. It’s already a fairly populated part of town, but put those two very large emerging projects on either side, and it’s an ideal place for something like that,” he said.

At full build-out, the master planned community RiverLights could hold 2,500 homes off River Road, while the master planned Barclay development includes homes, townhomes, apartments and a mixed-use center at South 17th Street and Independence Boulevard that will be anchored by a 14-screen movie theater currently under construction.

Retail centers with proximity to growing neighborhoods can help ease congestion on the roads, developers and planners say.

“Any time you can shorten trips, it’s good from a traffic standpoint,” Scarafoni said.

Harris Teeter is a well-known, popular chain in the area, he said, and the proposed store would be one of the largest stores the chain has in North Carolina if the development is allowed to go forward. 

With this new proposal, Harris Teeter joins the list of stores with plans for new locations in the area, including Publix, Aldi and Lidl. The other three stores are new to the market while Harris Teeter has existing stores.