What Summit Coffee Is Growing on Shearer Road, and Why the Bakery Comes Before the Houses
"If you go to Italy, you're not getting Sysco trucks driving up and down the coast to bring you all the food," Summit Coffee owner Brian Helfrich told Axios Charlotte in April. "You're existing on what you're able to grow and harvest from the land."
That idea is now under construction at 19300 Shearer Road, where Shearer meets East Rocky River Road across from River Run. Summit Farms is a 62-acre project from the Davidson-born coffee company. It has three parts: a 10-acre working farm called the Garden, a commercial center called the Village, and a residential section called the Preserve. The order they get built in is set by the town. Davidson's approval does not let the homes go up before the shops do, so the first things neighbors will see open on this corner are a coffee roastery, a bakery and a farm market.
The Town of Davidson approved Summit Farms as a Conditional Planning Area master plan. The approved conditions, dated August 22, 2023, allow three phases and describe how they can be sequenced:
The same condition requires each phase to finish its own infrastructure before its first certificate of occupancy is issued. That covers the road and pedestrian improvements from the Transportation Impact Analysis, utilities, grading and ordinance-required work. In the order the town approved, the commercial phase comes first and the homes follow, and each phase has to have its own infrastructure in place before anyone can occupy it.
The plans released in April follow that sequence. According to Axios Charlotte, phase one includes the Garden and the first three Village buildings. The Preserve's 55 custom home lots, sized from 0.2 to 1 acre and fronting common open space, are a separate track.
Cornelius Today put the Village's initial construction at about 17,000 square feet across three buildings. Axios reported the size of each one:
| Building | Approx. size | What's planned inside |
|---|---|---|
| Summit Coffee headquarters and roastery | 7,000 sq ft | Roasting, importing and distribution, plus a tasting lab and teaching area with beans for sale |
| Greenhouse Market | 6,800 sq ft | Grocery, deli, wood-fired pizza, ice cream shop and a bookstore run by a separate owner |
| Silly Goose Bakeshop | 3,000 sq ft | Pastries, seasonal tarts and desserts, and a high-end espresso program |
The roastery will handle "all of Summit's coffee importing, roasting, and distribution business," according to the Summit Farms Village page, and the tasting lab is meant to show visitors how the coffee supply chain works.
Silly Goose is a new business. The project describes it as a chef-driven cafe led by Summit Coffee Chief Culinary Officer Dora Callahan, with croissants and scones every day and tarts and desserts that change with the season. The market is modeled on general stores in Sonoma County and farm stands in the Midwest. It will stock what grows on site along with goods from nearby partner farms. No operator for the bookstore had been named as of the April announcement.
Outdoors, the plans call for a play area near the bakery, an open piazza-style space and a landscaped beer garden.
The phasing condition lets either the farm or the commercial center go first. The business model is the reason they are being built side by side. Axios reported that Helfrich chose a design in which the farm supplies its own customers: "You don't have to chase wholesale accounts or go to every farmer's market if it can exist in its own ecosystem."
Each part depends on the other. The Garden will grow produce, herbs and flowers to be used and sold on site, with full-time farm staff and plans to seek organic certification. The Greenhouse Market turns that harvest into groceries and made-to-order sandwiches and salads. In Axios's example, the tomatoes in the pizza sauce and the kale in the salad come from fields visitors can walk through. According to Axios, Helfrich built the plan this way because small farms struggle to sustain themselves when most farm revenue goes to large consolidated operations.
Summit Coffee says it opened in downtown Davidson in 1998 and opened its second cafe, The Outpost, in 2013. The Summit Coffee cafe directory now lists Basecamp and Outpost in the Davidson and Lake Norman area, along with cafes in Charlotte, Asheville, the Atlanta area and the Charleston area. Axios put the count at 20 locations.
Right now the company is spread out. Axios reported that roasting happens in a Cornelius warehouse and that executives work from a co-working space. Summit Farms brings the company back to Davidson in one place:
"We wanted a hub, basically a campus, that we can grow into for decades to come."
Helfrich said that to Axios Charlotte. He also told the outlet he now wants to do "fewer things better" and that "it's hard to scale intimacy." The Summit Farms about page says the project started with three families and Summit's need for a permanent headquarters, and that early sketches date to 2020. The Davidson town conditions also treat the coffee building as a special case. The commercial building at the southeast corner of the Shearer and East Rocky River intersection is exempt from one standard design parameter, but it still needs Design Review Board approval and must substantially match the form presented to the town.
The town's planning update, published by News of Davidson on September 14, 2026, says Summit Farms broke ground in summer 2026 after its site construction documents were approved earlier in the year. The update lists the first round of work:
Building-specific plans for the Village were under review at that point, and the town expected approval in late summer or early fall. The town said the developer aims to have the first Village buildings, including the roastery and bakery, operating in spring 2027. The project's own site gives a slightly wider target of "Spring/Summer 2027" for the first retail phase. Both are targets, not opening dates. The town's Summit Farms project page is where it posts updates.
The first three buildings are only part of what the town approved. The conditions permit an inn or hotel, a restaurant, and farm and agricultural product sales. They also allow a porte cochere at the front of a building labeled "Building #3/Inn." Helfrich told Axios he may later pursue a 40-bedroom boutique hotel, another restaurant, apartments, a brewery, and a wedding and events business. He expects Summit Farms to eventually become a weekend getaway, with more than half the acreage kept as open space.
These conditions affect neighbors who never buy a coffee there:
Under the phasing condition, the infrastructure for each phase has to be finished before the first certificate of occupancy for that phase, and the Preserve cannot come before the Village, which is targeted for spring 2027.
Summit Farms is the latest change on Davidson's east side, and the Ruffin Group keeps track of how projects like this move from approval to opening day around Lake Norman. If you are thinking about selling or buying near Shearer Road and want to know how the Village's timeline could affect your plans, Contact Us.
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