If you drive Olde Waterford Way regularly, you already noticed the corner near Custom Home Furniture Outlet sitting bare for a long stretch. Weeds one season, a graded pad the next, and no sign explaining why. That patch of ground, officially Commercial Lot 17, has now cleared the Town of Leland's approval process after failing to clear it at least twice before. What finally got the green light says something about how the rest of Waterford Village fills in, and why the pattern this year looks different from the pattern of years past.
The Lot That Kept Getting Sent Back
Town staff in Leland rejected earlier versions of the Lot 17 site plan twice before a revised proposal finally earned approval on June 22, 2026. The site sits on 3.03 acres between the Leland Station residential section and Custom Home Furniture Outlet, land that had been zoned commercial and sitting vacant under ownership of Wilmington-based Gray Bros. Holdings.
What eventually cleared the process, drawn up by Alfred Benesch & Company, is a roughly 20,500-square-foot building split into two uses: a 13,301-square-foot furniture retail space and three separate 2,328-square-foot office units, plus a covered patio and 52 parking spaces. That is a meaningfully bigger footprint than a single restaurant pad or a drive-through, which is likely part of why the earlier versions bounced back. A building that size changes the traffic pattern at that intersection more than a boutique storefront would, and Leland's planning staff apparently wanted the layout right before signing off.
For residents, the useful piece of information here is not the square footage. It is the fact that this corner sat through two rejected proposals before landing on furniture and office space rather than something else entirely. Whatever else was pitched for that ground didn't survive the town's review. What's actually going in did.
A Smaller, Faster Fill-In Down the Row
While Lot 17 worked through its second and third drafts, a different kind of gap in Waterford Village closed with far less drama. Delaney Tire and Auto is now open in the shopping center, occupying space that had been under construction as recently as March 2026.
It is not a glamorous addition, and it will not show up on anyone's list of favorite weekend spots. But it fills a category Waterford Village genuinely lacked. The center has built up a strong bench of dining and quick-service retail over the years. Everyday auto service was a gap, and it just closed a few months before Lot 17 cleared its final hurdle. Two very different tenant types, arriving on two very different timelines, both point the same direction: the last unfinished pieces of this shopping center are getting filled rather than sitting open indefinitely.
The Restaurant Row That Didn't Need Fixing
Here is the part of Waterford Village that has not needed a second or third draft. The dining lineup along Olde Waterford Way has been stable enough that most residents could sketch it from memory.
| Spot | What it's known for |
|---|---|
| New Day Cafe | Breakfast and brunch, extensive specials menu, regularly draws a wait on weekend mornings |
| The Pit Backyard BBQ | Family and veteran-owned, chicken, pulled pork, and brisket, opened in 2025 |
| Cape Fear Seafood Company | Wilmington-area seafood chain's Waterford location, popular for lunch |
| Christopher's Steakhouse and Seafood | Sit-down dinner spot in the same retail row |
| Falcone's Italian Restaurant | Italian dinner option in the plaza |
| Six Happiness | Longtime Chinese-American takeout and dine-in |
| Chicken Salad Chick | Quick-service lunch chain |
| Port City Java | Local coffee chain with a Waterford location |
None of these are new this year. What's worth noticing is the contrast: the dining side of the shopping center reached a stable lineup years ago and has mostly stayed that way, while the retail and service side has been the part still working itself out, lot by lot, permit by permit. That is not how most shopping centers develop. Usually dining is the part that churns, chasing whatever concept is trending, while anchor retail sits fixed for a decade. Waterford Village has run in the opposite order.
What the Gates Don't Show You From the Road
None of this retail activity touches the other half of what Waterford actually is, which is the reason the shopping center matters less to daily life here than it would in a neighborhood without an alternative.
Waterford is built around Osprey Lake, a 10-acre natural lake fed by roughly 17 miles of controlled freshwater canals and ponds that wind through the community's 19 separate gated sections. Residents fish and kayak directly from a launch on the lake, and there is a sandy beach area for anyone who wants to swim without leaving the neighborhood. The same pathway network that connects the 19 gated sections to each other also connects them to a clubhouse built around tennis, pickleball, bocce ball, and a fitness center.
That combination changes what the shopping center's slow, lot-by-lot buildout actually means for someone living here. In a community without on-site water access or trail connectivity, a still-vacant retail parcel would read as a gap in daily convenience. In Waterford, the canal system and the lake have been finished and functioning for years. It's the retail edge, not the recreational core, that has been catching up.
Reading the Pattern Correctly
Put the two timelines side by side and the shape of what's happening becomes clear. The recreational spine of Waterford, the lake, the canals, the pathways connecting all 19 sections, was built out early and has needed no revisions since. The commercial edge along Olde Waterford Way is the part still being finished, and it is being finished unevenly. A tire shop opened in a matter of months. The lot next to it took multiple submitted plans and at least two rejections before the town accepted a design.
That unevenness is worth knowing if you live here, because it explains why the shopping center can feel simultaneously complete and unfinished depending on which direction you're driving. The dining row past Harris Teeter has looked essentially the same for years. The corner near Custom Home Furniture Outlet just went from empty ground to an approved 20,500-square-foot building in the same year a tire shop opened two doors down. Both are true at once, and neither changes what the lake and the canals have already offered residents for years.
If you're curious how any of this, from the newly approved commercial space to the community's amenity package, factors into what your own Waterford property is worth right now, South End Realty tracks these changes as part of how we price homes across Leland and the wider Wilmington coastal corridor. Reach out any time you want a straight read on where things stand.
