Downtown Cary Turns 50 This Month, and Fenton Still Doesn't Have a Grocery Store

For four years now, "the new Cary" has meant one address. Fenton, the 92-acre district at the I-40 and Cary Towne Boulevard interchange, opened in 2022 with Williams-Sonoma, Arhaus, and a sushi counter from Durham chef Michael Lee, and it has spent every year since collecting more national names. But look two weekends out on the calendar and the anniversary party isn't happening there. On August 22 and 23, downtown Cary is marking 50 years of the Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival, a tradition that predates Fenton itself by decades. That gap in ages says something about which part of town is actually finishing what it started, and which part is still filling in blanks.

The Milestone Downtown Is Actually Marking

The Town of Cary is running the 50th annual Lazy Daze at the Cary Town Hall Campus on North Academy Street, and this year's version leans into the number. Over 250 artists will set up across the grounds, four stages will run entertainment both days, and more than 25 food and beverage vendors will work the crowd between the beer garden and a new addition called the Lazy Lounge. The festival is bringing back Solina: Dragonfly, a whimsical interactive sculpture from environmental artist Michael Roy Layne of Legacyworks, this time with lights and bells added for the anniversary. John Webster, Cary's Town Crier for 22 years running, will make the rounds in full regalia to announce the Jerry Miller Award winners around 1 p.m. Saturday, a nod to the festival's founder.

The evening before, Downtown Cary Park hosts Demo Daze, where the same artists give live demonstrations and kids get their own zone called Doodle Daze, hosted by author and illustrator Darren Farrell. New this year is the ACCESS the Arts Artist Market, spotlighting ten North Carolina artists with disabilities in an indoor setting. None of this is new infrastructure or a ribbon cutting. It is the same civic event running on the same downtown ground it has occupied for half a century, which is a different kind of longevity than anything Fenton can currently claim.

Chatham Street's Own Building Boom

Downtown isn't standing still while it celebrates its birthday. At 107 E. Chatham Street, the 1951 filling station most recently known as Gurkan's Downtown Auto Repair is becoming Lloyd's Full Service, a restaurant project approved by the town in November 2024 that expands the original 1,258-square-foot building to 5,000 square feet while restoring its original facade. The site sold for $900,000 in 2021, which gives some sense of what a small Chatham Street parcel was worth even before the current wave of interest.

A few blocks over, Kane Realty has proposed Flatiron, a seven-story mixed-use building on roughly two acres at 602 W. Chatham Street and 523 Old Apex Road, sited directly across from Vicious Fishes Brewery. The plan calls for more than 200 apartments alongside restaurant and retail space. As of the May 2026 announcement, the town had not yet approved the project, so it is still a proposal rather than a groundbreaking. Meanwhile, one Chatham Street redevelopment has already crossed the finish line: Meridian Cary, a multifamily building on the former Jordan Professional Building site at 127 West Chatham Street, wrapped construction in 2026 after breaking ground in the first quarter of 2023. The project adds 10,000 square feet of retail space fronting both Chatham Street and Waddell Plaza.

Fifty years of Lazy Daze predates Fenton, the Cary Towne Center mall across the street from it, and most of the neighborhoods that have gone up around both of them since.

What Three Years at Fenton Still Doesn't Include

None of this is a knock on Fenton, which has genuinely changed how people in Cary spend an evening. But a three-year look back from The Cary Report is worth sitting with. Sweet Paris, a Houston-based crepe and coffee concept, is targeted to open at 1 Fenton Main Street Suite 190 as the district's first true indoor cafe, a gap that regular visitors had been pointing out. Reeds Jewelers was slated to open by the end of 2025, broadening the retail mix beyond apparel. The bigger news is the newly announced Pagemore Hotel, a 186-room boutique property from Mainsail Lodging that will include an Eastern Mediterranean restaurant called Barouk and event space for roughly 200 guests, though it isn't targeted to open until fall 2027.

What's still missing is the same thing that's been missing since Fenton opened: a grocery store. Wegmans canceled its planned Fenton location back in 2021, and no replacement grocer has been announced since. For a district built on the promise that everything you need would be in one walkable place, that's a conspicuous hole three years in. In the meantime, nightlife is where Fenton has actually delivered. Sports & Social and PBR Cowboy Bar, the only place in Cary with a mechanical bull, give the district an after-dark energy that downtown doesn't try to compete with.

Two Weekends Worth Blocking Off

If you're mapping out the rest of August and September, here's what's actually on the calendar right now:

1. The evening before — Demo Daze at Downtown Cary Park, with live artist demonstrations and the Doodle Daze kids zone, running 6 to 9 p.m.
2. August 22-23 — The 50th Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival at Cary Town Hall Campus, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days.
3. September 12 — The Whiskey, Wine & Fire Festival at Koka Booth Amphitheatre.
4. September 20 — Rainbow Kitten Surprise at Koka Booth Amphitheatre.
5. October 18 — Trampled by Turtles at Koka Booth Amphitheatre.
6. October 24 — Gavin Adcock at Koka Booth Amphitheatre.

Koka Booth, tucked into a grove of pines and owned by the Town of Cary, runs more than 60 events between April and October most years, so this stretch is only a slice of what's booked between now and the weather turning.

The Cary You're Actually Living In

The honest answer to which part of town matters more is that they're doing different jobs. Fenton is where a Friday night out has moved, and its restaurant and retail lineup keeps growing every few months. Downtown is where the civic calendar lives, the kind of institutional memory that shows up as a 50th anniversary rather than a grand opening. What's changing right now is that downtown is finally getting its own building boom to go with that history, one small Chatham Street parcel at a time, while Fenton is still working through a punch list that includes something as basic as groceries.

If you've been assuming Fenton absorbed everything downtown used to offer, the calendar over the next two months says otherwise. Both places are worth your time this fall, for different reasons.

For more on what's shaping daily life and property values across Cary, browse SB Real Estate's Cary neighborhood guide, and when the conversation turns from festival season to floor plans, schedule a personal consultation with our team.