Wegmans agrees to buy a Cornelius site for a second Charlotte-area store, three weeks before its first one opens

Wegmans has entered into an agreement with Atrium Health to buy property at the southwest corner of Westmoreland Road and Statesville Road in Cornelius, next to the Atrium Health Lake Norman complex, a company spokesperson confirmed to The Charlotte Ledger. The grocer said the company is evaluating the site as a potential location for a future store along with other possible uses.

The confirmation came Monday, September 21, less than a month before the chain’s first Charlotte store opens in Ballantyne on Wednesday, October 14, at 9 a.m.

The essentials on both sites.

• The Ballantyne store at 11550 North Community House Road runs 110,000 square feet and will employ about 450 people, according to Axios Charlotte.
• The store is Wegmans’ fifth in North Carolina and its first in the Charlotte market, four years after the company opened in Raleigh.
• The Cornelius land sale has not closed, and a second store would likely take a couple of years to open if the deal goes ahead, according to the Ledger.
• Wegmans has not committed to building a store on the Cornelius site.

What the Ballantyne store will have

The store is built as what the company calls an animated shopping experience, with workers cracking cheese wheels and rolling sushi in view of customers, according to Axios. Several features are firsts or near firsts for the chain.

• A beer garden with artificial turf for children, a covered patio and a mobile bar cart with single serve beer and wine, the first Wegmans to test the idea.
• A French inspired cafe with made to order sandwiches and salads, 180 seats indoors and 106 outside.
• A Market Grill where customers order by QR code and have food brought to the table, only the second Wegmans to offer one.
• A produce department with more than 700 varieties of fruit and vegetables.

Why Cornelius

The site sits at one of the busiest intersections on the southern shore of Lake Norman, beside the hospital and a short drive from the interstate. A Wegmans trade area runs eight to ten miles, compared with two or three for a typical grocery store, a company executive told Axios in 2024, which is why the chain does not cluster stores the way its competitors do. Cornelius would serve the whole northern arc of the county and the lake towns beyond it.

The long road to Charlotte

The Ballantyne store was announced in April 2024, after years of a Facebook group with more than 7,000 members campaigning to bring the chain to Charlotte. The Ledger had predicted the location in 2019, when the Ballantyne developer set aside an unusually large grocery parcel. Wegmans bought the site in January 2025 and broke ground that September.

The company follows a pattern other out of town grocers have used in Charlotte. Publix opened its first North Carolina store in Ballantyne in 2014, and Sprouts opened its first Charlotte store there in 2018, before both expanded into other parts of the city.

Good to know

Wegmans expects lines on opening day, and fans have discussed camping out ahead of the October 14 opening, according to the Ledger. Hiring for the Ballantyne store is still underway across several departments. The store sits less than half a mile from The Bowl at Ballantyne, the mixed use development covered in our Ballantyne guide.

Our read: the Cornelius agreement is the more telling news. A chain that waited a decade to enter Charlotte is planning its second store before the first one opens, which says what the company expects the first one to do.

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