Dive Brief:

• In sleepy Pittsboro, North Carolina, a town of about 4,000 residents on the fringe of the Research Triangle Park region, commissioners voted 4-1 this week to give a go-ahead to a 7,500-acre development that eventually will bring as many as 60,000 people to the town.
• Preston Development Co., based in Cary in neighboring Wake County, spent years assembling the parcels, and the town commissioners spent months and months holding hearings and asking questions.
• The vote give's Preston permission to start as soon as it can on 5% of the residential portion of the project and 15% of the commercial portions of the project that it calls Chatham Park, after the name of the county of which Pittsboro is the seat.

Dive Insight:

Chatham County has avoided most of the development that has washed over other Triangle counties such as Wake, Durham, Johnston and, to a lesser extent, Orange. The county is an easy commute from the region's tech and research jobs, however, and Preston sees the potential.