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Cary town staff fielded questions in 2025 about whether local zoning would allow a facility tied to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but members of the town council say they only recently found out those conversations happened. The revelations center on a stretch of correspondence between town planners, a local real estate broker, and a federal employee working to secure office space — all of it unfolding without the full council’s knowledge, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.
A Broker’s Zoning Questions in June 2025
The chain began in June 2025, when real estate broker Sam DiFranco Jr. contacted Cary officials through the town’s 311 portal, asking whether local zoning would permit a daytime detention facility connected to ICE, according to the News & Observer. DiFranco had listed a building at 3500 Gateway Centre Blvd., which carries a Morrisville mailing address but falls under Cary’s zoning rules. He described a prospective buyer as a government agency tied to ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, and said that buyer was reportedly a West Coast-based development company planning to lease the building to ICE — though the paper reports the building’s actual buyer turned out to be unrelated to ICE.
Cary official Jeph Allen consulted town planning staff about the proposed use and told DiFranco on June 12, 2025 that the use would not be considered a correctional or penal institution. Two weeks later, on June 27, Allen told DiFranco that office use by a government agency without overnight detainees would be permitted. Town of Cary planning staff have said government office use without overnight detainees would be allowed under current rules, and that such a use could be permitted within Cary’s Airport Overlay district — a zoning area covering land near Raleigh-Durham International Airport…