The Rainmaker - Kevin Dougherty

Series Introduction

This is the seventh of a 12-part series on community builders who participate in Activate Selma, NC.

The author is Cindy Brookshire, one of four co-founders of Activate Selma.

Kevin Dougherty, president and owner of AdVenture Development, shares his vision for Selma’s future from the company’s downtown office.

The Rainmaker

Kevin Dougherty is president and owner of AdVenture Development. He’s a quiet man, always on the move, from early morning workouts at HealthQuest, to quick cups of coffee at Coffee on Raiford, to pulling on a hard hat and safety vest to walk construction sites. He’s constantly taking meetings, brokering deals, taking calculated risks, playing the long game.

The really long game. He’s been selling Selma, North Carolina as the central place on the Eastern seaboard to invest in since 2004, with the first 10 acres he purchased that is today, Eastfield, a 435-acre mixed used development on I-95 at exits 97 and 98 in Selma. With over 3-million square feet of space, the project is already 30 percent built out – a combination of retail, and soon, medical, senior living, manufacturing, hospitality, and both single and multi-family residential properties.

To drive Eastfield now – a ballet of roundabouts, equipment clearing trees, apartments rising behind retail stores, and paved roads precursing the arrival of hundreds of single-family homes, it may seem chaotic but there is vision unfolding, and Kevin holds it.

For an excellent backstory on that vision, read journalist Dan Barkin’s October 4, 2021 Business North Carolina article: Point taken: Veteran developer sees promise in rural Johnston County.

And for the latest update on the Eastfield project in Selma, watch the Eastfield Economic Summit video, produced by AdVenture Development, posted last year:

In it, Kevin says, “At the heart of everything I do are relationships. For me, relationships are about connecting with people. Relationships are what brought me to Selma, and they’re the foundation of what we’ve achieved and will continue to achieve … every decision we’ve made has been based on adding value to this community for those who live here, work here, and visit this special place that we call home.”

For this blog post, our focus is on how Eastfield and Activate Selma intersect and work together.

‘Now Is the Time to Invest in Selma’

First, we go back to 2018. That’s when Kevin Dougherty first turned to locals like Jeffery Hamilton in a planning board meeting at the Jernigan Building and said, “if you’re looking to invest in Selma, now’s the time to do it.”

Jeffery says he took Kevin’s advice to heart and, along with his sister, Zena Rose, bought a vacant building downtown at 123 North Raiford Street, renovated it, and opened Coffee on Raiford. Around that time, Jeffery also co-founded Activate Selma with a group of residents, volunteers, and business owners who began revitalizing and uplifting the rail community with their own grassroots vision (“we don’t complain, we take action!”) and mission of personal responsibility (“by changing ourselves, we change our community and create a new record of success for Selma”).

Along with Kevin’s larger vision of developing east of I-95, Kevin also wanted to invest downtown.

“I tried to buy this building from Charles Hester forever,” Kevin says of the historic Person-Vick Building at 101 South Raiford Street. Former Selma Mayor Charles Hester wanted to do something with it, according to Kevin, “but his health was failing. Two weeks after the funeral, Ron Hester called me. He said his father had told him, if you’re not going to do anything with the building, call Kevin. And he did.”

“I bought it for $165,000,” Kevin shares. The property needed extensive renovation throughout. That took almost two years, and another costly investment. “We moved in on December 31, 2020. I had just gotten over COVID the day we moved in. It was the best move we ever made. I absolutely love this location. I love being part of downtown Selma.”

The upstairs houses the AdVenture Development offices; the downstairs, Gateway Engineers, a full-service engineering firm, and to the side, Asian Eatery, an award-winning family-owned restaurant that is open seven days a week.

Above Images: The Vick Building with the AdVenture Development Office and the inside of Asian Eatery.

Kevin remembers sending Joe Basar and Mark “Mac” McDonnell, former members of his team, now retired, as well as himself, to attend Wednesday morning meetings of Activate Selma, as well as offering the newly opened Old North State Food Hall as a hosting location. “The thing about those early Activate Selma meetings, we said, let’s get three things done each week. I wrote down 3 x 52 weeks = 156. Seven years later, that’s 1,000 things. They may be small things, but together, they make an impact – especially when you look where we are today. Just pull the tax value of every renovated property downtown and you’ll see. This building alone – guess what? It’s worth well over a million."

Jeff and Zena have since sold their building to the new owners of Coffee on Raiford, and have invested in a second downtown building, 113 North Raiford Street, where they will soon open Zena’s Gift Shop.

Committed To Community

Kevin’s commitment to community shows in the details. Eastfield is three times as large as McCandless Crossing, AdVenture Development’s last project in Pittsburgh, Pa. One day soon, a huge sign, simply stating “Eastfield” will greet I-95 travelers at Selma, similar in size to the one touting “Richmond” in Virginia.

Still, even today, Kevin’s assistant Mandy Heitman loads electronic billboard messages to McCandless, from her desk upstairs in the Person-Vick building in downtown Selma.

“She sent ‘Don’t forget Sunday is Mother’s Day … Make the call’ and we got an email from someone who said, ‘I was at a traffic light at the business park [in McCandless] and saw your message. I haven’t spoken to my mother in five years. You guilted me into it. Thank you.”

So, Kevin is delighted to hear that Veetee Rice’s associate account manager for the southeast, Jake Patterson, has committed to come to a Wednesday morning Activate Selma meeting. Veetee, which is investing $36 million at Eastfield to establish its first production and distribution center in the United States, wants to encourage their employees who fill the 200 high-paying manufacturing jobs to be involved in the local community.

Kevin hosted Veetee’s U.K. owner, CEO and COO in September when they visited Selma and met with local officials. “They’ve ordered their equipment and should begin receiving it later this fall to begin manufacturing by the end of the first quarter of 2027,” he says. “They’ve moved their warehousing and distribution from Chicago to Selma, and will distribute across North America, not just the U.S.”

Recently, AdVenture Development also signed a lease with a new operator for the former Old North State Food Hall. Miguel Orozco, celebrated as Dynamic Entrepreneur of the Year at Johnston Now Magazine’s 9^th Annual Johnston Now Honors ceremony, opened The Paradise Mexican Buffet on September 16, 2026. Orozco, according to the magazine’s July 2026 issue, has been running Elisas Commissary Kitchen, with locations in Selma, Smithfield and Henderson; Friday 445 Grill in Smithfield, the Gran Gala Event Center in Princeton; 2nd Hand Consignment in Smithfield (which includes kitchen equipment); and Oro Financing, which offers assistance for those trying to get their food trucks rolling. To learn more about Orozco, visit www.orozcosdesignandbuilding.com.

“I’m very excited about that,” Kevin says. “They’ve got quite a lot planned with events, music, rental of rooms, that kind of thing.”

On Track is a Relative Term

La-Z-Boy and a stand-alone Starbucks will open soon; In 2027, AdVenture Development will break ground on the Marriott SpringHill, the first of three new hotels in Eastfield. Kevin often gets the question, “Are you on track?”

“In reality, plans depend on many factors. For example, I started making calls to Target in 2006 and they opened in 2026. That’s 20 years. Then again, BJ’s visited our team in September 2024, signed the deal February 2025, and opened January 2026. The warehouse was less work inside and ready to go. No carpet, lighting, drop ceilings. Can we do something in less than 12 months? Absolutely. That’s the power when everybody works together.”

To Kevin and his team, “This is much more than a development – we live in the area, too. We have 348 apartments opening up, and in 2027, we’ll start construction on Eastfield Farms, and 211 single-family homes. The apartments are close to the shopping center because people want walkable today. We have four miles of sidewalk for people from mothers with baby strollers to seniors. That’s what gives the energy. The focal point is this stream,” he says, pointing on a wall map in his conference room to a blue fluid line that winds through the community, “with walking trails along the stream, as we add the other pieces. The idea is live, work, play, and hopefully, between 300 and 5,500 jobs created at full buildout.”

Giving Back

AdVenture Development has been very supportive of local nonprofits and community endeavors with a focus on youth, education, faith, and recovery, from programming at Johnston Community College and Smithfield-Selma High School, including their competitive NC Robotics team, FRC 6004 f of x Robotics, which has had a home for more than a year at a co-work space on JR Road in Eastfield; to the Boys & Girls Club of Johnston County. Members of the AdVenture Development team have served on local boards including the Triangle East Chamber of Commerce. AdVenture Development also supports the operation of Hope Center Ministries and has donated land for building a recovery house for men at Eastfield.

Kevin says, “The Town of Selma was very supportive of the recovery house because they said, ‘Look, you know, from a workforce point of view, the guys won’t even have to have a van to get to the industries. They can walk across the street to work. This is designed to be a walkable community. The Men’s House in Dunn, North Carolina is exactly what we’ll be building here at Eastfield. It’s really a beautiful house.”

Why Town of Selma?

Kevin says he has worked in close communication with Chris Johnson since Johnson took on the job as Johnston County’s economic development director 10 + years ago.

“I heard him speak at Sysco at a lunchtime event when he was maybe three or four months into the job, and Chris admitted, ‘Selma’s the poorest town on I 95 from Portland, Maine to Miami.’ He said, ‘I want to change that.’ I thought, we’re going to help change that, too, and immediately, as a company, we adapted that same mantra. I think Selma’s still a work in progress, but it’s made a significant move in the last 10 years that Chris has been in that job.”

“This whole area is completely bound by highway, by interstate. There are very few sites in the country that have two major interstates yet has signalized access and is accessible.”

Eastfield could have been a county project, Kevin explains, but AdVenture Development voluntarily annexed Eastfield into Selma.

“Selma needed a lift, and two, the town never would have had the financial wherewithal to build this infrastructure in a timely basis for us, so we ended up having to build all the infrastructure ourselves, hand it over to them, and create a development agreement that allows them to pay us back for it over the next 15 to 20 years. It has been a really good partnership in that regard, going back to Mayor Charles Hester, then to Mayor Cheryl Oliver, and now to Mayor Byron McAllister. There has been uniformity in the support of this project from mayors, council members and staff.”

“I joke, but it’s true – having been through three mayors, eight town managers, and at least seven water and sewer guys, when the town hires someone new, they send them over here for orientation because they know we know as much about the infrastructure as many of them do. The town, with Phil McDaniel as town manager, has a really good staff right now in terms of knowing how to get things done in electric, water and sewer, in staffing and on time. They know where everything is, they know what they’re doing, and they’ve been really good partners with us. I’ve worked in a lot of communities in the last 40 years [including Charlotte and Pittsburgh]. The town’s upped their game, and they’re doing a good job on everything they are supposed to do relative to developing and managing projects and investing in the community.”

Kevin points out for surrounding jurisdictions, “The newcomers are your customers – if you had a good business before, you will have a great business now. Next year, there will be 10,000 more people. When my wife Hope and I first started coming to Johnston County in 1987 to visit family, there were maybe 70,000 people. When we moved here in 2004, it was 100,000. Today we’re over 280,000. That’s a huge jump. For the longest time, there was no development east of 95, and now it’s gone all the way into Wayne County, spurred by Wake County on this end and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base on that end. It’s going to connect at some point. Sysco’s CEO says this is consistently the number one or two out of all 80 Syscos in the U.S. and it’s based on our workforce. People show up, they don’t call off sick, they have a work ethic. That’s why it performs so well, and that’s because Johnston County’s history is agrarian. Farmers know how to work.”

Advice for Activate Selma

“Consistency and commitment are the things I absolutely love about Activate Selma,” says Kevin. “You’ve proven the power of all those ‘co’s’ that are essential to success: communication, cooperation, collaboration, and coordination. Success as a town. Success as a quality of life, success as a place to work and place to live.”

“I think the meetings are an opportunity to collectively discuss in a safe environment issues, or to build consensus, or to brainstorm ideas,” he continues. “Here’s a few things I wrote down.”

• Take a break. “You meet 50 times a year? If meetings become too rote or ordinary, give yourself permission to take a week off once a quarter.”
  
• Ask larger companies or groups to send a rep to meetings. “Activate Selma is a connector for employment, for the Chamber, for the Visitors Bureau. We’re small, so I can send someone from my office once a quarter to attend, but other companies that have a lot of people -- it’d be great to make sure you’ve got a representative from Sysco at your meetings.”
• Hold a 2036 session. Just like the 2019 charrette at the Selma Civic Center, where Activate Selma members, along with others, put priority dots on charts of what they’d like to see Selma do, Kevin advises, “Hold your own charrette.” At the 2019 charrette, we took the three most populated dots to heart: “Overall Appearance,” “Creative Theme,” and “Night Life” – and it did give Activate Selma the impetus to continue our formation and weekly meetings on our own.
• Get on the bus. Instead of a meeting, caravan and drive every street in Selma, and stop and get out. “We do that in real estate,” Kevin says. “We get out and explore the area to understand how and why it operates, what could work better.”
• Celebrate our milestones. “I have a gong in my office, and when we hit a milestone, we hit the gong,” says Kevin. “It may seem cheesy but it means something.”
• Soar high – at Johnston Regional Airport. Kevin suggests a field trip to the #1 private airport in the state. “In volume of activity, it’s the #3 busiest airport in North Carolina behind RDU and Charlotte,” says Kevin. “Visiting the airport would help you see how your small-town efforts fit into the big picture. The airport is only 8.4 miles from downtown Selma, a 14-minute drive.
• Keep planting seeds. Kevin looks at the map on the wall of his office. “If you’ve noticed, the streets names in Eastfield are subtle leads toward faith – Providence Boulevard, Endurance Way, Trinity Springs. Even the logo, is both a cross and a compass pointing east.” 
  “What I’m doing is no different from what you do, every time you meet, as Activate Selma. You’re planting seeds and encouraging growth. So you say to yourselves, what can we imagine as a seed that we could plant now that we may never get to see? Any shade from that tree, 30 years from now, they’ll go, “Wow, they were really thinking ahead on that.”
  
  
• Tell Selma’s story. Tell it again. And again. Back in 2018, when Kevin was the rainmaker, beating the pavement to sell Selma – he remembers how real estate agents just weren’t, in his words, “hustling it.”
  “I had a couple real estate agents in the area say to me, ‘Why would you go to Selma?’ And I about came out of my shoes. I pointed out when we moved here in 2004, Hope and I went over to Apex and it was a dump. Downtown was a mess. I went back in 2015, and it was amazing. And they didn’t have anywhere near the interesting architectural buildings Selma has. That story needs to be told again and again, in Our State magazine, in the Triangle Business Journal. Anytime anybody says anything about Selma, Triangle Business Journal picks it up and it reaches people around the globe. Ben Tobin is one of the best writers they have. So anything we can get out there positive, they’ll get it.”

“I’m 66, and I have never seen more opportunity in my life than I do right now. I would tell you driving up and down streets, I’d say, buy that house, tear it down, or buy that empty lot. I’d be building a new house there because it’s going to go. It’s all going to go.”

Above photo: Kevin joined in the discussion at an Activate Selma meeting at Hinnant Family Vineyards that included Suzanne Ross from the Small Business Center at Johnston Community College. She explained possible grants through the Rural Spark program.

If you'd like to read more stories in this series, go to https://cindybrookshire.substack.com/