The development of Piner Landing, a two-phased office and retail project in Monkey Junction, has been a family affair for Nash Taylor, his brother Lee Taylor and their dad, Greg Taylor, who owns Wilmington-based design-build firm TCM Construction.

The Taylors have owned the development site at 701 Piner Road for decades. For years, it served as their family garden, Nash Taylor said, but as more people and businesses moved to the Monkey Junction area, they decided to develop it.

They saw a demand for more office space in the market. Nash Taylor said the area has a growing number of retirees and a lack of both medical office space and new commercial products.

“It’s kind of overlooked as its own node, but it’s a very big node in terms of daily traffic,” he said. “Target’s coming next to Home Depot. That’s going to transform everything, and we just see more legacy development of suburban grocery stores and large parking lots, and you don’t really see any mixed-use development, or, say, office.”

There are some examples of medical office development. Nash Taylor pointed to Wilmington Health’s conversion of a former Golden Corral location at 5211 S. College Road, but he said medical offices are still concentrated in other parts of Wilmington, like Mayfaire.

The first phase of the project, a single-story, 13,000-square-foot Class-A office and retail building, broke ground during the second quarter of 2024 and took about a year to build, Nash Taylor said.
 
Wilmington Smile Center is already a tenant in the building. The Taylors are working to secure a lease with an architecture firm, and they’re in talks with several medical users. They also want to bring a “high-end cafe user” to the building’s end unit.
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Nash Taylor, who has master’s degrees in architecture and real estate development from Columbia University, designed the project and worked on its underwriting, while his dad, Greg Taylor, financed it, and his brother, Lee Taylor, managed its construction.

The project’s second phase involves a separate three-story, 40,000-square-foot Class-A office and retail building next to the first phase of development. The Taylors expect to break ground on that building in the second quarter of 2026.

“It’s a much larger format of medical office,” Nash Taylor said. “We’re looking really at a tenant that’s much more like a hospital or surgery group type of place.”

The Taylors are also eyeing another nearby property along Carolina Beach Road for a 60,000-square-foot office and retail development. They already have 80,000-square-foot commercial buildings in the works in both Southport and Hampstead.

“Our goal is to provide truly Class-A office, really well designed for long-term hold investments,” Nash Taylor said. “So this is not like tilt-up quick, and then lease it as fast as you can and sell it. This is long-term value. We also want to be known to have buildings and be a landlord that builds buildings that are truly high quality for the tenants (to be) in place for a very long time.”