Pappas Properties starts Publix-anchored retail phase at Cadia Matthews

Pappas Properties has begun the retail phase of Cadia Matthews, its 82-acre mixed-use development at Stallings and Idlewild roads in Matthews, where a 120,000-square-foot commercial village called Cadia Village will be anchored by Publix. Sitework at the village is nearly complete, the Charlotte Business Journal reports, via Connect CRE, and construction is expected to begin later this fall before the first retail buildings deliver in June and the quick-service restaurant follows next fall.

The rest of the retail program is small-format — a bank branch and a 12,000-square-foot stand-alone medical office building — with Choate Construction as general contractor for the village and the Publix store and Thrift Commercial Real Estate Services handling leasing. Behind that commercial phase, Cadia Village Matthews will hold 570 residential units at full buildout, split between for-sale and rental product, putting the 120,000 square feet of retail at the front of a longer phased build.

The coverage is silent on the capital stack — no project cost, equity partner or construction lender appears — so it remains unclear whether Pappas is building the village to hold as an income asset or to sell once the Publix lease seasons, the merchant-build question grocery-anchored sponsors answer project by project. Publix's commitment is the one capital fact the coverage supplies.

PWD has argued that scarce new supply gives well-located retail pricing power and that the grocery covenant in particular is the clearing unit of retail capital, pricing following the anchor rather than the center around it. Its September reporting from Los Angeles found grocery-anchored centers drawing record bids while the tenant base in nearby immigrant commercial districts had not recovered from the June 2025 enforcement surge. A ground-up village like Cadia tests that position from the other side: if the anchor covenant is what buyers and lenders underwrite, its value gets set at delivery, when rents and tenant mix become legible, rather than at the groundbreaking.

Between now and then the roster is the thing to watch, because Publix is signed but the coverage names no tenant for the bank space, the 12,000-square-foot medical office building or the restaurant, and how quickly Thrift fills those boxes will say more about the grocery-anchor thesis here than the construction start does. The coverage gives no timeline for the 570 residential units that follow the retail phase.