A vacant lot near downtown Fayetteville has sat vacant for years; Wells Alderman, a resident who lives nearby and co-owner of A&G Residential, a homebuilding company, saw potential for that to change.
“This has kind of been ... I guess, kind of my baby in a way,” Alderman said about the lot off of Branson Street. 

“It’s right there where I live ... literally every day, that’s the way I go to work,” Alderman said. “So everyday I go by and I’ve always, for the over 15 years I’ve been in Fayetteville, [thought], ‘That is just vacant land"

Recognizing the location’s proximity to downtown and Haymount as well as the school district, Alderman decided the lot was a prime location
to build on.

“It’s all about walkability,” he said, noting the location of the new food truck stop, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, and Friendship House a short distance away.

“It’s taken me almost a year, but the story behind it is that we took ... parcels that we were able to cut up into multiple lots,” he explained.
In the end, after moving around the property lines, there were 27 building lots.

He said that, oftentimes for projects like this, people who see the project will be concerned that someone’s home was taken from them.

“There were only two houses on all these parcels and both of them were vacant. We didn’t take anybody’s home away from them,” he
assured.

Initially, A&G Residential had all 27 lots for building. “Even though the market’s been great, I was like, ‘You know, I want to bring another
builder in,’ just because I didn’t want to chew off 27 lots at one time.”

Initially, Alderman brought on Ben Stout Construction. Ben Stout is the president of the Homebuilders Association of Fayetteville. Jamie
Godwin, the other co-owner of A&G Residential, is the president-elect of the Homebuilders Association of Fayetteville.

But upon some extra consideration, Alderman decided he wouldn’t stop there. “And then, I sat back and said, ‘You know, I really want this
project so everyone in Fayetteville can see nothing but local builders are trying to make this project work, so I ended up bringing in ...

OnSite Homes, which is Ned Johnson, Woodland [Building Solutions] which is Bowman Smith, and MSP [Construction & Development]
which is Michael Pleasant. All local. They all live here. They’re going to retire here. All local builders, and I thought that was kind of important.
So there’s really now five different builders.”

Ned Johnson is the vice president of the Homebuilders Association of Fayetteville. Bowman Smith and Michael Pleasant on the HBAF Class

of 2021 Board of Directors.

Each of the companies has five or six lots each. Each home will be a single-family home, with a variety of plans offered across the lots. “I’m
building two different plans. I’m building a ranch plan and a two-story plan. Sizes will be 1800 square feet to 2300 square feet. All of them will
have two car garages,” Alderman said of the homes.

He explained that people who have noticed the building have asked if the builders are building Section 8 houses. He says they are not.

With supply chain shortages, the builders hoped that the houses would start off in the $250,000 price range, but now, Alderman says they
are looking at something closer to starting in the $280,000s. At the time of the interview on Nov. 3, Alderman said that Ben Stout had already

sold one of the houses.

“They’re going to be good-looking houses,” he said.

With multiple builders and post-COVID challenges, Alderman estimates that the houses will all still be completed by late spring or early
summer next year.

Alderman notes that the project has seen total support from the City of Fayetteville and PWC has assisted with the development as well; he also
credits the builders who have made the project a success.