Forsyth County’s undeveloped Tanglewood Business Park is still far from being ready to host businesses, but some corporations have considered building facilities in the 169-acre space.
At a recent county listening session held at Clemmons’ public library, deputy county manager Kyle Haney said companies such as UPS and Salesforce had shown interest in building in Tanglewood Business Park once it’s developed.
The county has been attempting to find businesses to occupy the park for years. The land is located off Idols Road near Tanglewood park, just southwest of the Clemmons village limits, and has six lots to host potential corporate facilities.
Ellis Keifer, a vice president of economic development with Greater Winston-Salem Inc., who is marketing the property, said that the organization has target recruitment industries such as advanced manufacturing, food and beverage processing, biotechnology and life science, logistics and distribution, and corporate headquarters.
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“Tanglewood provides an excellent economic development opportunity as one of the region’s few large, rail-served sites,” Keifer said.
According to Haney, UPS (United Parcel Service) showed interest in using the space to develop drone technology at what could have been another corporate headquarters. Salesforce considered building a corporate training facility in the business park, Haney said.
Although both of those projects are no longer active, Greater Winston-Salem Inc. is still looking for corporate suitors that would occupy space in the business park. Haney said that the county is currently in the process of extending sewer systems onto the property and to other areas such as the nearby Dillon Industrial Drive.
In the same stretch of time that the county has attempted to successfully contract with businesses to build in the park, it has often felt backlash against development from the Village of Clemmons.
From the very first presentation of the project to the Clemmons council in 2016, residents and council members alike found immediate fault with the county’s traffic projections.
Residents flocked to council meetings and county board meetings listing their concerns about increased truck traffic on Middlebrook Drive and Lewisville-Clemmons Road. They also shared worries about the project’s potential negative effect on property values and what they thought would be a detrimental impact to the environment.
The town’s 2019 refusal to allow Beaufurn LLC, a commercial furniture manufacturer in Bermuda Run, to develop a facility in the business park was a clear sign of their position.
The county bought back the land from Beaufurn in 2019 and has since delayed the development of the business park.
Now, with protective covenants in place over the undeveloped 169-acre property, county officials have already received money to build utility connections for the business park and appear to be moving forward with a vision that is minimally disruptive to Clemmons.
The covenants restrict the uses of the business park to “light industrial,” and 24 potential development types, including academic biomedical research, banking and financial services, testing and research lab, and warehousing among others. Although those covenants are currently in place, the county commission could choose to dissolve them in the future.
At the meeting, Haney also said that the county would also have to consider conducting additional traffic studies and road improvements to examine what effects Riverwalk, a proposed 500-home subdivision nearby, could have on the business park.
“We know it is a very unique site, it’s not accessible for the highway,” Haney said at the meeting. “So if there’s a project that has a lot of traffic, that’s not something that fits that site.”
Mike Combest, a councilman of Clemmons, said he was reluctant to speak about the business park until a finalized proposal was presented.
Michelle Barson, a councilwoman and mayor pro-tempore of Clemmons, said that she trusted county officials on an individual level but added that the vision that a county commission has for the property could change at any time.
The worst-case scenario, Barson said, would be a development that adds a heavy amount of truck traffic into the surrounding community, or a manufacturer that creates a negative environmental impact on the area.
“I don’t ever think anyone doesn’t want the best for something,” Barson said. “Situations change and people sometimes don’t have the patience and time to make it the best it can be.”
