Alamance County closes Graham home deal, awaits Mebane EMS land swap

Alamance County has closed on the historic former Bank of America branch at 141 South Main Street in Graham, turning a long-delayed purchase into a new site for the visitors bureau. But the separate land swap meant to help move an EMS base closer to Mebane is still stuck, leaving one public project finished and another waiting.

County commissioners approved the Graham house purchase in December 2025 by a 3-2 vote, using $650,000 from the Alamance County Visitors Bureau’s 3-percent occupancy tax revenues. The county plans to lease the building back to the tourism authority, and Bank of America will be allowed to keep a drive-thru ATM operating there for at least five years. The house was built in 1878 by industrialist E.M. Holt as a residence for one of his daughters, later refurbished by Bank of America after it bought the property in 1993, and the branch was shuttered in 2024.

The deal had not moved smoothly. Commissioners delayed it in September 2025 after then-vice chairman Steve Carter said the county had not yet received all the information it had requested from Bank of America. With the closing now complete, work has begun on the site, giving the county a visible downtown Graham win after months of uncertainty.

The Mebane project is moving much more slowly. In summer 2023, the county paid $300,000 for the South Third Street parcel from the Alamance County Rescue Unit because county officials said the nearest EMS station serving Mebane was in downtown Graham, a setup that contributed to slow response times. The parcel later became part of a broader land swap tied to Koury Corporation’s mixed-use project near Trollingwood-Hawfields Road and South Third Street.

Koury’s plan was described as an 83-acre development in late 2024 and later as an 88-acre mixed-use project with retail, townhomes and rental apartments. Target separately agreed to buy 10 acres for a 128,000-square-foot store. Mebane City Council approved conditional rezoning in December 2024 after being told the county’s South Third Street land was under contract.

In August 2025, commissioners approved a swap that would give Koury about 2.58 acres near NC 119 and Smith Drive in exchange for the county’s roughly 1.66 to 1.68-acre South Third Street tract. The county made that exchange contingent on Koury first closing on the NC 119 property, and as of April 2026 that closing had still not happened, even as Alamance County moved ahead with bidding for construction of the EMS base.

The result is a split outcome for county land strategy: Graham now has a closed deal and a planned tourism use, while Mebane and the surrounding communities are still waiting on the land transfer that could improve emergency-service coverage.