Crescent Communities has announced it will market thousands of acres in its holdings for solar development.

North Carolina-based Crescent is a diversified real estate investment trust originally created by Duke Power to manage the utility company’s land holdings. Now that it’s an independent real estate trust, its purpose has changed.

“This is the first time that Crescent Communities as an independent company has worked in the energy development space,” said Richard Payne, Crescent’s project manager.

He said that not all of the company’s holdings would be suitable for solar farm development and the trust will retain some of the property for other uses. But the timing is right for solar with renewable energy portfolio standards putting pressure on utility companies  to invest and the cost of solar falling so low.

Among Crescent’s holdings is 50,000 acres originally purchased for Duke in 1969.
“Crescent will market a portion of the acreage in its land portfolio as suitable for potential solar farm development,” Payne said.

Since a lot of the land was purchased with energy development in mind, it’s ideal for solar farms – big open tracts of land with immediate access to transmission lines.

Payne said the company would be open to either selling or leasing the property to a solar developer and has already started to identify and work with potential partners who could develop the properties. Crescent has even started some detailed planning efforts at certain sites.

“Crescent Communities today is looking for different ways to do things,” Payne said, “and this initiative is a smart and innovative way to use several very large land tracts that have direct onsite connections to the power grid.”