A community on property the Trask family bought about 60 years ago near Wrightsville Beach is expected to continue to evolve as growth plans proceed.
 
Autumn Hall, a 236-acre mixed-use development on Eastwood Road, is expected to include additional office, retail, residential, hotel and park space. Already, the development has 173 single-family home sites, 286 apartments, including a 24-acre Continuing Care Retirement Community – Carolina Bay at Autumn Hall developed by Liberty Healthcare – and 140,000 square feet of existing class A office space.
 
The third of three recently built commercial buildings that include offices on Eastwood Road received its certificate of occupancy in January, said Mike Brown, of Cape Fear Development. Cranfill Sumner, a law firm, has moved into the newest structure, “which we’re very excited about. They’re our lead tenant,” Brown said. “They’re going to be joined here in the next few months by Maxim Healthcare, CAPTRUST and Primis Mortgage.”
 
That means the Cranfill Sumner building is fully leased, he said.
 
The law firm relocated from its downtown space to the Autumn Hall office, 5535 Currituck Drive, Suite 210, earlier this year. The firm’s new office was designed to match the brand’s company colors and meet employee needs, which include in-person and remote options. 
 
“As working environments have changed over the past few years, we are excited that this new office will provide great opportunities for our employees to work together and collaborate in person and remotely,” said Benton Toups, a partner at Cranfill Sumner, when the firm announced its move in January this year.
 
In 2017, one of the largest residential real estate firms in Southeastern North Carolina moved into 18,000 square feet in Dungannon Village, a two-story office building at Autumn Hall.
 
“The office is just off of Eastwood Road, so we have great visibility, and it’s very convenient to just about everywhere. We’re within minutes of the beaches, downtown, midtown and Mayfaire,” said Tim Milam, CEO of Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage, at the time. 
 
Cape Fear Development recently inked a lease with Novant Health for an additional 33,000-square-foot class A medical office facility that will be built on the corner of Carolina Bay Drive and Eastwood Road, across from an existing Novant Health medical office building.
 
Despite the prevalence of remote working brought about by the onset of the COVID pandemic of 2020, Brown and others who work in development and real estate say Wilmington is still in need of office space. 
 
Pandemic work trends, he said, have “helped our local office market as we have seen a steady influx of entrepreneurs and employees moving to the area.”
 
The Wilmington area’s level of office inventory is another plus.
 
“We haven’t seen the amount of office product built in Wilmington that other markets have seen so there’s not a glut or an oversupply,” Brown said. “Construction of new office buildings has occurred organically, and so the office market here is pretty healthy.”
 
Thomas Construction is expected to start on another office building in late summer 2023. 
 
In an interview at the end of March, Brown said there’s not a lot of office space on the market in Wilmington.
 
“Nobody was building speculative office space here like you might find in larger markets like Raleigh or Charlotte, where you have these huge speculative office towers with empty space,” he said. “Here, demand has driven supply rather than supply getting ahead of demand.”  
 
The first single-family home in Autumn Hall was built in 2009, according to a community information website. In 2005, Trask Land Co. led the effort to rezone the site to a mixed-use designation. Neighbors protested the development of the property, part of which was previously home to Duck Haven Golf Course, and filed a lawsuit. The 2005 lawsuit was subsequently settled out of court, according to a StarNews story in 2006.
 
Raiford Trask Sr. purchased the Autumn Hall land in the 1960s for about $27 per acre, according to a previous Greater Wilmington Business Journal article.
 
“Trask originally bought a 1,500-acre lot, which included some land that is now part of UNCW and the current Autumn Hall development site,” the article stated. “There, Trask built an 18-hole public golf course called Duck Haven Golf Club and his home, which overlooked a 10-acre lake.”
 
These days, the golf course and Trask home are no longer there, but new occupants and amenities are on the way. Some of the key pieces of new Autumn Hall projects are already in place, Brown said.
 
“I think we’re uniquely positioned in that all of our off-site improvements are done. There’s no debt on the land, all the stormwater is in place, water and sewer is in place. A lot of that core supporting infrastructure that’s necessary for development if you’re starting from new with a vacant undeveloped parcel, is already in place, so we’re in a unique position in the market to execute a quality and intentional development approach.”
 
The extension of Autumn Hall Drive construction is scheduled to start in about six months, Brown said, and that will open up Autumn Hall’s remaining undeveloped 90 acres. 
 
That land could hold 250,000 square feet of retail space, 140,000 square feet of office space, a 250-room boutique hotel with a spa and entertainment venue overlooking an 8-acre lake, 40 acres of park space and 500 more luxury apartments. 
 
“We’ve taken a long-term view in that we want to build the highest quality product and the best, highest-quality experience to meet demand,” Brown said. 
 
That demand will only continue to grow with Wilmington’s burgeoning population, he said.
 
“You’ve got an additional need for housing,” Brown said, “but also you’ve got additional demand for amenities, so that would be retail, restaurant and lifestyle-oriented amenities.”