Drive the intersection of Sam Furr Road and Old Statesville Road in Huntersville today and you will see graders, silt fencing, and two sets of rezoning signs that have already done their job. On one side sits Station South, a 21.3-acre project approved unanimously by the Huntersville Town Board in December 2025. Directly across the corner sits Knox Crossing, 44 acres that cleared a 4-3 town board vote in May 2026. Between them, the two projects will eventually bring more than 750 residential units and roughly 146,000 square feet of retail and commercial space to a single stretch of road.
Both were designed, marketed, and approved around one shared assumption: that a Red Line commuter rail stop is coming to this exact spot. The problem for anyone comparing Huntersville against Cornelius or Davidson right now is timing. The Red Line is not scheduled to open before 2035, and even that date depends on years of design and construction work that has barely started. The zoning got ahead of the infrastructure by close to a decade. That gap is the thing worth understanding before you decide what this corridor is actually worth to you as a buyer.
Two Rezonings, One Future Train Stop
Station South, developed by Peak Development, calls for 278 apartments and 70 townhomes, plus 59,100 square feet of retail, restaurant, and office space spread across roughly 20 buildings. Five units are set aside as attainable housing for 15 years, reserved for households earning between 80 and 120 percent of area median income. The town board approved it unanimously on December 16, 2025, in its final meeting inside the old Huntersville Town Hall. Peak's own estimate put annual property tax revenue from the finished project at more than $180,000, compared with under $10,000 generated by the site today.
Knox Crossing, led by WLA Enterprises, went through a longer and more contested process. After a February 2026 public hearing surfaced concerns about commercial square footage and townhome height, the developer reworked the plan with Foresite Group before the Huntersville Town Board approved it 4-3 on May 19, 2026. The current plan allows up to 413 residential units and 87,000 square feet of commercial space, anchored by a 45,000-square-foot grocery store. Thirty units, 7.5 percent of the total, are reserved as affordable housing for 15 years at up to 100 percent of area median income.
Assistant Planning Director Brad Priest told the board the site fits squarely into Huntersville's 2040 Community Plan, noting it sits where the town wants its most intense growth:
"This is probably the location where you're going to want the most intense development in Huntersville. You've got the rail station, you've got two thoroughfares and you've got a major greenway trail system that's going through the property."
That reasoning only holds if the rail station shows up on schedule.
| Station South | Knox Crossing | |
|---|---|---|
| Site size | 21.3 acres | 44 acres |
| Residential units | 348 (278 apartments, 70 townhomes) | Up to 413 (apartments and townhomes) |
| Commercial space | 59,100 sq ft | 87,000 sq ft, including a 45,000 sq ft grocery anchor |
| Affordable units | 5, at 80-120% AMI for 15 years | 30, at up to 100% AMI for 15 years |
| Board vote | Unanimous, Dec. 16, 2025 | 4-3, May 19, 2026 |
The Timeline the Zoning Doesn't Show
The Red Line itself is a 25-mile, 10-station commuter rail project running the existing Norfolk Southern corridor from Uptown Charlotte through Huntersville, Cornelius, and Davidson, with a planned extension toward Mount Mourne near Mooresville. Huntersville is set to get three stops: one at Hambright Road, one downtown, and one just north of Sam Furr Road, which is the stop both Station South and Knox Crossing are built around.
In March 2026, following Mecklenburg County voters' approval of a one-cent transit sales tax the previous November, the Charlotte City Council approved an additional $37.9 million to advance the Red Line's design, bringing the total engineering contract with HDR Engineering to $43.2 million. That funding is meant to push the design to roughly 30 percent complete, a milestone officials targeted for the end of 2027. Once design work wraps, construction itself is expected to take about nine years, putting the earliest possible opening at 2035.
Nine years is also roughly how long it has taken this project to get this far in its current form, and it has not moved in a straight line. In 2019, after an earlier feasibility review, the Charlotte Area Transit System shelved commuter rail on this corridor entirely and pivoted to bus rapid transit instead, before regional leaders revived the rail concept in the years since. A project can be back on track and still be a decade from delivering a single ride.
A Second Timeline, Running Separately
The road beneath both developments has its own schedule, and it does not line up with the rail timeline. Sam Furr Road, designated NC 73, is slated for a widening project that would take an 8.5-mile stretch from two lanes to four or six. That construction is not expected to begin until around 2027. In other words, the corridor is adding hundreds of new residential units and a full grocery anchor years before either the wider road or the train that justified the rezoning in the first place actually arrives.
Huntersville residents have raised the same concern in public meetings. As one resident, Dana Campbell, put it during discussion of the corridor's growth:
"It doesn't seem as though we build the infrastructure to hold the capacity for a larger amount of people."
That is not a knock on either project. Both went through a public rezoning process, both include mandated affordable units, and both align with a town plan that has been in place for years. It is simply the honest state of the corridor right now: density approved, infrastructure staggered, transit still theoretical.
What This Means If You're Comparing Huntersville Right Now
For a buyer weighing Huntersville against Cornelius or Davidson, the Sam Furr corridor is a specific kind of bet, not a shortcut to instant walkability. A few things are worth carrying into that comparison:
- The housing product taking shape here leans multifamily and attached, apartments and townhomes with a small affordable set-aside, not the detached single-family stock that defines most of Huntersville's established neighborhoods.
- Whatever premium eventually attaches to walking distance from a working rail stop is not available today. It is priced on a horizon of years, not months, and depends on a project with a documented history of delay.
- Construction traffic, phased retail openings, and a road widening that has not started yet will likely define daily life around this intersection well before any of the long-term upside does.
- Huntersville's other advantages, its existing downtown, Birkdale Village, and established lake access points, do not depend on the Red Line at all and are worth weighing on their own terms.
None of that makes the corridor a bad choice. It makes it a long-duration one, and long-duration bets deserve to be understood as such before a contract gets signed.
Common Questions
Is the Red Line definitely going to happen? It has more funding and political support behind it now than at any point in the past two decades, including a dedicated county sales tax and a multi-million-dollar design contract. It has also been shelved once before, in 2019, and remains years away from a construction start.
Should I avoid buying near Sam Furr Road until the rail is closer to done? That depends on your time horizon and what you want out of the property. A buyer planning to hold for a decade or more is in a different position than one who wants immediate walkable amenities. The honest answer is that any transit premium in this specific pocket is speculative for now.
What's actually being built there today, not eventually? Right now, that means active construction on Station South's apartments, townhomes, and retail space, plus site work beginning on Knox Crossing's 413 units and grocery anchor. The rail platform and the widened road are both still in planning, not in the ground.
If you are trying to figure out where a corridor like this fits into a Huntersville, Cornelius, or Davidson search, that is exactly the kind of question we spend our time on. The Alexander Realty Group tracks these local zoning and infrastructure timelines alongside the market data, because the two rarely move at the same speed. If you want to talk through what a property near Sam Furr Road, or anywhere else on the Lake Norman corridor, actually means for your timeline, Let's Connect.
