The office building topped out in mid-May 2026, less than a month after the Creekside student housing building on the same district hit its own topping out. Two milestones inside four weeks is a reasonable proxy for how fast The Grounds is coming out of the ground.
Project Scope
Five stories, 127,000 square feet of Class-A office on the Deacon Boulevard corridor in Winston-Salem. It consolidates roughly 400 Wake Forest University employees from seven departments — Financial Services, HR, Information Systems, Legal, Audit and Compliance, University Advancement, and University Marketing and Communications — into one building.
Carter, out of Atlanta, and Winston-Salem’s Front Street Capital are the joint-venture developers. NELSON Worldwide is the architect and district master planner. Brasfield & Gorrie is the general contractor, with Stimmel Associates and McAdams on civil. The university owns the land and leases it long-term; it’s the anchor tenant, not the developer.
Financing is a mix. Eighty million in tax-exempt public finance authority lease revenue bonds carry the building, with a $35 million State of North Carolina infrastructure grant and a $4 million City of Winston-Salem contribution supporting the district around it. The city’s bond approval was an IRS conduit formality and carries no municipal debt liability.
Delivery is expected in 2027.
Why It Matters
The building grew during design, which is worth noting because it’s usually the other way around. It was announced at 100,000 square feet in 2024, sits at 127,000 today per the developer, and shows as 130,500 in the bond filing. Programs that expand between announcement and permit are rare in the current office market.
The district math is what makes it work. The Grounds already draws 750,000-plus patrons a year across 260-plus event days, and Wake Forest controls 178 acres in the area. Office space next to a functioning entertainment district with a captive institutional tenant is a fundamentally different asset from speculative suburban Class-A, which is why this one got financed while others didn’t.
Vacating Alumni Hall frees the university to convert it to academic space, part of a campus plan targeting 35% more academic square footage.
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Project Team & Details
| Developer | Carter and Front Street Capital (joint venture) |
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| Owner / Client | Wake Forest University (ground lessor and anchor tenant) |
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| Architect | NELSON Worldwide |
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| Consultants | Stimmel Associates (Civil)
McAdams (Civil) |
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| General Contractor | Brasfield & Gorrie |
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| Status | Topped Out |
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| Funding Source | Mixed |
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