New businesses coming to Freedom Town Center

A more than $1 million expansion project expected to begin next week at Freedom Town Center includes additional restaurants, stores and a nearby escape room that will open between now and September.

The list of new tenants that have signed leases with the shopping plaza include: Escapology, Alpaca Peruvian Charcoal Chicken, the Maple Street Biscuit Company, a First Watch Daytime Cafe breakfast place, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Jacked Nutrition, Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina, Charter Communications and a sushi restaurant yet to be named, said Phil Wilson, one of the ownership partners.

With the additional tenants, the center’s 49-acre retail sphere will encompass about 25 stores, restaurants and businesses. Wilson said the addition of probably another four or five tenants in the future will complete the center.

An Escapology Escape Room franchise has committed to a lease with RealtyLink, the Greenville, South Carolina-based real estate developer and manager of the sprawling center that operates at the corner of Cliffdale and Skibo roads.

Escapology, as its website states, “is a high adrenaline escape game where players are locked inside a themed room and must complete their mission before time runs out. During the 60-minute experience, players are immersed into a real-life adventure where they must find hidden clues, crack codes, solve challenging puzzles and escape.”

“We’re starting on additional shopping space,” said Wilson. “We’re starting construction on four more space buildings.”

The latest Fayetteville Inspection Department building permit report lists two $500,000-plus commercial renovation projects off Freedom Parkway Drive that snakes through the Freedom Town Center. The owner of the center is listed as NC Fayetteville Skibo LLC, a single-asset entity that includes Realty-Link owned and developed property.

 

The building pads already are in place, but not the four buildings, Wilson said.

Construction on the two projects will probably begin Tuesday, he added.

“Escapology will open quicker,” he said. “They will all be opening between now and September as the buildings are completed.”

Once occupancy of the new buildings has been completed, Wilson said, Freedom Town Center will be 95 percent completed.

“The final section is changed from the original concept,” he said. “We actually picked up a little more square footage and a greater number of tenants.”

Besides some smaller centers here and there, the center’s ownership group also operates similar-sized shopping plazas in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The $85 million Freedom Town Center first opened in September 2017.

“Fayetteville is great to work with,” Wilson said. “We’ve been very pleased, and the retail stores are doing very well.”

Staff writer Michael Futch can be reached at [email protected] or 910-486-3529.