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A belly-up North Carolina shopping mall will become Epic Games’s new corporate campus

Goodbye Food Court

A belly-up North Carolina shopping mall will become Epic Games’s new corporate campus

The Cary Towne Center in Cary, North Carolina. (Courtesy Google Maps)

Epic Games, the American video game and software development company first hatched in a suburban Potomac, Maryland, basement belonging to founder Tim Sweeney’s parents is, 30 years later, moving on to new digs; an on-its-way-out shopping mall.

Earlier this week, Epic Games—now a multibillion-dollar-company based in Cary, North Carolina—announced itself as the newest owner of Cary Towne Center, a (near) dead shopping mall that debuted in the late 1970s and was significantly expanded in 1991. In a press announcement, the Fortnite developer announced plans to transform the 87-acre property into a sprawling corporate compound that includes “both office buildings and recreational spaces, allowing Epic the flexibility to create a campus customized from the ground up to accommodate its long-term growth.”

The conversion of the mall—now largely vacant aside from a modest smattering of stores and eateries and a Belk serving as the sole surviving anchor—is expected to be complete by 2024 with the company’s workforce expected to move in the same year. Epic’s current and decidedly conventional (save for some defining features) corporate campus is located roughly three miles away from its future home at Cary Towne Center. In 2019, Epic had announced a major expansion to its campus. That will no longer be moving forward as the company’s attention shifts to the shopping mall conversion planned to kick off across town later this year.

Noting that “plans for the Epic campus are still in the early phases,” it’s not yet entirely clear how much of the old Cary Towne Center will be demolished and how much will be left standing and converted as part of an adaptive reuse overhaul. The previous owners of the property, Turnbridge Equities and Denali Properties, acquired the mall in early 2019 for $31 million from CBL & Associates. In October 2020, Turnbridge and Denali revealed plans to demolish the mall in its entirety and replace it with a mixed-use development dubbed Carolina Yards. (Years earlier, CBL had initiated a rezoning process, a process later finalized by the mall’s subsequent owners and approved by the city in late 2019.) The transformative Carolina Yards project, which would have featured housing, a hotel, retail, office space, and more, was set to kick off this year. Obviously, something changed over the last several months, leading Epic to acquire the mall for a reported $95 million.

Despite plans to convert the site into a private corporate campus for a wildly successful interactive entertainment company, some of the property—exactly how much remains uncertain as of now—will be reserved for community use, an aspect that Epic is working alongside the City of Cary to realize. A $193 million indoor sports complex and regional recreational hub is also planned for the site. “We look forward to continuing to work closely and collaboratively with the Epic team as they conceptualize their new campus, and we’re honored to partner with them on this exciting new development,” said “Cary Mayor Harold Weinbrecht in the announcement.

“Epic shares our vision for transforming Cary Towne Center into a vibrant community space. This sale is further validation of our value-driven investment strategy, and the property could not be placed in better hands,” added Jason Davis, managing director at Turnbridge Equities. “After years of shifting development plans for the Center, we are thrilled the space will be utilized to its full potential and turned into something the Town and community of Cary can be proud of.”

When it first opened in 1979, the Cary Towne Center (then the Cary Village Center) was the pride and joy of Cary, the third-largest municipality in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. The single-level mall thrived throughout much of the late-20th century, enjoying a major expansion in 1991 that saw it gain three new anchors and grow from 325,000 square feet to over a million square feet. The mall’s more recent history has been defined by various comings (hello, Dave and Buster’s) and goings (goodbye, Macy’s). But similar to countless other once-thronged, now-struggling indoor shopping malls, tenant departures have far outweighed new arrivals and the dying Cary Towne Center was repositioned as less a shopping destination and more of an opportunity for mixed-used redevelopment.

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