On the morning of August 14, the Holly Springs Cultural Center on West Ballentine Street filled with model trains. Local train clubs set up scale layouts, a history presentation from Rob Rousseau connected the display to the town's old rail line, and the North Carolina Railway Museum sent over artifacts. Outside, the Farmers Market ran its biggest crowd of the year for SproutFest, with a Touch-a-Truck lineup from the Fire and Police Departments. It was Downtown Week, the centerpiece of a celebration marking the town's founding in 1876.
Across town, at the corner of New Hill Road and Green Oaks Parkway, a different kind of momentum has been building all year. Grain & Berry is serving açaí bowls to a lunch crowd. Golf Hour's four TruGolf Apogee simulator bays stay booked most evenings. Flying Biscuit Café has a ten-year lease and a summer 2026 opening target. None of it has anything to do with the town's history. It has to do with what Holly Springs is becoming next.
Both of these things are true about Holly Springs at the same time, and neither one cancels out the other. That's the part worth understanding if you live here: this isn't a town choosing between its past and its growth. It's running both storylines in parallel, in two different parts of town, on two different timelines.
Downtown Is Having Its Biggest Year in 150
Holly Springs incorporated in January 1877, after local leader Col. George Benton Alford filed papers with the General Assembly the year before. That 1876 date is the one stamped on the town seal, which is why the sesquicentennial celebration kicked off on July 5, 2026, during the Independence Day festivities at Sugg Farm. Attendees who found the town's tent that night walked away with commemorative fireworks glasses and reusable 150th fans, and got a look at a time capsule alongside historical displays.
The celebration isn't a one-weekend event. It runs from July 2026 through May 2027, with town leaders planning a downtown finale next year that's expected to include a drone show. Communications director Cassie Hack framed the intent behind the yearlong format in a statement to Suburban Living Magazine:
"The 150th celebration will have events and activities everyone can enjoy."
August was built around downtown specifically. Alongside the model train show, the town ran Savor Holly Springs, a Downtown Restaurant Week where participating restaurants offered 150th-themed specials, and a farmers market dressed up with antique farming equipment and a traditional cake walk. The train show itself wasn't a random theme. It honors the Cape Fear & Northern Railroad, which broke ground through Holly Springs on July 27, 1898, once the reason downtown existed as a commercial stop at all.
What's next on the 150th calendar is HollyQuest, a town-wide scavenger hunt launching in September that sends participants hunting for clues at historic locations, parks, and town facilities. Genentech has signed on as the celebration's premier sponsor, which tells you something about how the town is funding a yearlong party without leaning entirely on ticket sales and merchandise.
Oakview Commons Is Filling In Fast, and It's Not Downtown at All
While downtown spent August looking backward, Oakview Commons kept doing what it's been doing since its first buildings opened: filling every available storefront with something new. The development sits on 12 acres at New Hill Road and Green Oaks Parkway, built with three retail buildings and a future hotel site planned for more than 135 rooms. It exists to bridge two things Holly Springs has been adding at the same time: new subdivisions like 12 Oaks and the business campuses taking shape at Oakview Innovation Park next door, a roughly 200-acre site slated to house FujiFilm Diosynth Biotechnologies and Catalyst Biocampus.
The tenant list has grown quickly enough that keeping track of it has become its own small hobby for residents. As of this year, the plaza includes:
- Oakview Public House, a full-service restaurant with a patio, a serious bourbon list, and a kids menu built to survive family dinner
- Arita Ramen & Sushi, bringing a sit-down Japanese menu to a plaza that didn't have one before
- Grain & Berry, a superfood café serving açaí and pitaya bowls, smoothies, and specialty toasts
- Golf Hour, an indoor golf and multi-sport lounge with four TruGolf Apogee simulator bays and a self-pour taproom carrying 15 taps
- Switch Craft, a beer and wine gathering spot
- Access Fitness & Recovery, a 24/7 gym with cold plunge and sauna recovery amenities
- Degree Wellness, offering cryotherapy, infrared saunas, and IV vitamin drips
- Thanks a Latte, Cold Stone Creamery, Astoria Nail Bar, Virge Yoga, and Image Studios rounding out the daily-use mix
Flying Biscuit Café signed a lease for a 3,753-square-foot space with a summer 2026 opening target, according to a report from CBS 17, which would make it the plaza's first dedicated brunch concept. For residents of 12 Oaks, none of this requires getting in a car. Foot paths, bike routes, and golf cart access already connect the neighborhood to the plaza, and a micro-transit shuttle was slated to add another option starting this January for anyone who'd rather not walk.
None of this is downtown, and none of it is trying to be. It's a plaza built to serve a business park and a subdivision boom, and it's doing that job well enough that it's become the default answer to "where do you want to eat tonight" for a growing share of the town.
The Cultural Center Is Turning 20 the Same Season Downtown Turns 150
Downtown's most interesting news this fall isn't only about history. The Holly Springs Cultural Center, which opened in 2006, kicked off its 20th-anniversary performance season with an announcement on August 5. The lineup leans into the anniversary rather than around it. Southern Wake Players Community Theater brings "1776" to the stage September 18 through 20, a musical retelling of the Declaration of Independence debates. Right behind it, "A Haunting in Holly Springs" runs October 2 through 4, an audience-participation comedy mystery recommended for ages 13 and up.
The season's most local moment comes October 17, when the all-volunteer Holly Springs Community Band marks its own 20th anniversary with a free concert. Reservations are required, and the town is asking attendees to bring food donations for the Holly Springs Food Cupboard, turning a birthday concert into a community food drive without much fanfare about it.
This is the piece that complicates any easy story about "old downtown versus new plaza." The Cultural Center sits on West Ballentine Street, inside the historic core, and it's programming a season built around live theater, comedy, and music that has nothing to do with train history or century-old rail lines. Downtown isn't frozen in 1876. It's just running its own kind of new alongside the 150th nostalgia, on the same block.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The town doesn't need you to pick a side. If your Saturday leans toward a beer flight and a golf simulator, Oakview Commons has been built for exactly that, and it keeps adding reasons to stay longer. If you'd rather sit through a Tony-winning musical or catch a scavenger hunt clue at a historic marker you've walked past a hundred times, downtown has that covered too, and it's doing it with more programming this year than most years combined.
What's actually new about Holly Springs this fall isn't a single opening or a single event. It's that two very different versions of a Friday night are both fully operational at the same time, on opposite sides of town, and both are getting stronger. A restaurant like Limra Mediterranean, opening its self-service buffet and bistro concept away from both of those centers, is a reminder that the food scene isn't confining itself to either pole either. Growth here isn't concentrating in one direction. It's spreading out, and that's a different kind of town than the one that existed even two years ago.
If you're weighing what a home search actually looks like in a town with this much simultaneous change, The Oxford Team has spent years tracking how Holly Springs and the rest of the Triangle grow block by block. Request a free home valuation and let's talk about what your next move looks like here.