About The Timothy Ash Carr Center
“One of the basic human rights is housing — the right not only to have a place to live, but to have it be your own.”
Jimmy Carter
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Former President of the United States of America
The Carr Center
The Carr Center is a mixed-use development on church-owned land aimed at addressing multiple community issues. Housing is the bedrock of this development. The Carr Center will provide 51 units of affordable housing to households between 30% and 60% of the area median income as well as 11 units of program housing. The 51 units of affordable housing will be owned by DHIC, a leading nonprofit affordable housing developer in central North Carolina. The program housing units will be part of The Carying Place’s housing inventory and dedicated to their mission of housing and empowering working families with children experiencing homelessness. The ground floor will contain the Greenwood Forest Children’s Center for early childhood education, non-profit offices for The Carying Place, and amenities for the upper floor apartments. The local YMCA branch will also bring its programming to the ground floor.
Greenwood Forest Baptist Church began contemplating how it could be better stewards of its resources in 2019. After conversations with partners across the region, everyone told the congregation that if they had land that the most urgent need was housing. Through those conversations and congregational discernment, the partnerships with The Carying Place and DHIC were born. Later in the process, the Town of Cary joined the project and purchased adjoining land to build homeownership-oriented affordable housing.
Transformation in the Heart of Cary
In recent decades, Cary has become a major regional municipality alongside Raleigh and Durham in the Triangle Region of North Carolina. The influx of tech companies and other industries has led to explosive growth, but the housing supply has not kept pace. The Town of Cary has made commendable efforts toward alleviating the housing crisis in recent years and one of the steps they’re taking is to become part of the Carr Center project.
The Town of Cary purchased land for sale adjacent to Greenwood Forest Baptist Church and is planning to build affordable home ownership units on their land to add to the spectrum of housing options available. The municipal government has also been supportive in providing federal and municipal grants for pre-development funding for the project, ensuring that our team of non-profits could get the effort off the ground smoothly. Likewise, the Wake County government has already committed $900,000 to the project as part of their dedication to housing affordability and early childhood education.
51
Units of Affordable Housing
11
Units of Program Housing
180+
Preschool Students
The Carr Center’s Namesake
The Carr Center is named for Timothy Ash Carr, a pivotal force in its development before he passed away in 2024. Tim Carr was a member of Greenwood Forest Baptist Church, a volunteer at The Carying Place, and Senior Vice President of Real Estate for the YMCA of the Triangle. One of his favorite projects was the Beacon Site, which included a public school, a YMCA, housing by DHIC, and small business opportunities. A beloved member of so many communities, Carr’s legacy lives on here.