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Wells Fargo plans to consolidate its Uptown workers into four core buildings next year and vacate 300,000 square feet of space it currently leases. Over the next year, the vacancy rate in Charlotte's center city could double to 14 percent. WFAE's Julie Rose reports:

Barely two years ago, office space was hard to come by in uptown Charlotte. Now there's a glut, with two massive office towers set to come online in the next few months - including the Duke Energy Center. And major consolidation is afoot in the banking sector.

Wells Fargo announced this week it will vacate four buildings in which it is the single largest tenant. Chauncey Mayfield's company, MayfieldGentry Realty Adivsors, owns two of those buildings, but he's been expecting the announcement.

"There was a hole that had been dug in the ground to build a Wachovia tower (when we bought the building)," says Mayfield. "We knew that it was less than 50 percent chance they would stay in our building. But on the flip side of that what we saw was an economy that was still vibrant."

But that was in 2007, before the Charlotte region's employment hit 12 percent and banks laid off thousands. Charlotte's uptown office vacancy rate is now above 7 percent and expected to double next year, according to several commercial real estate analysts - including Colliers Pinkard and CB Richard Ellis. They also say the cost to rent office space uptown will likely fall 15 percent next year.

Still, Mayfield says Charlotte is performing better than most other markets for his commercial real estate company. The biggest change he sees in the future is the need to rent to lots of smaller businesses rather than big behemoths like the banks gobbling up entire floors in downtown buildings.

Add some facts. What are the 4 buildings? What is the square footage they are vacating? How does that percentage relate to the overall uptown vacancy?