Charlotte’s Olde Mecklenburg Brewery is expanding as part of a massive project called Ballantyne Reimagined that’s under construction next to the Ballantyne Hotel. The brewery is the first business to be announced for the project.
The Queen City has a lot of breweries, but this is a first for the Ballantyne neighborhood.
“If you look at where the breweries are in Charlotte, they tend to like to be in areas that are about to be redeveloped — maybe where there are some apartment complexes, people can walk to them, those sorts of things.,” The Charlotte Ledger’s Tony Mecia told WFAE’s Marshall Terry in this week’s BizWorthy. “That is actually now starting to describe Ballantyne with this big Ballantyne Reimagined project where they're putting in in the first phase, you know, a thousand apartments, a lot of retail shops. So it's an area that's going to be a little bit more conducive to what breweries typically are looking for.”
Not all business news is about things opening. The Epicentre, once the crown jewel of uptown Charlotte nightlife, has officially entered foreclosure proceedings.
Today a Mecklenburg County Superior Court judge signed off on the foreclosure of the EpiCentre, clearing the way for the one time entertainment hotspot to be sold. Future plans for the site have not been announced yet. Neither has a date for the sale @wsoctv pic.twitter.com/qug9AO8EOe
— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) March 15, 2022
“Even before the pandemic, (the Epicentre) had problems,” Mecia said. “Some of the businesses were closing. There were problems with security, a couple of high-profile shootings. It's now only about 30% occupied. Most of the major tenants have left. The owner of the Epicentre fell behind on its payments to its bank. The bank is foreclosing, and this week, a Mecklenburg County Court approved the foreclosure. The next step is the property is going to be sold at auction, so something's going to happen there.”
You can listen to the full BizWorthy conversation above. Here’s a quick look at what else Mecia and Terry covered this week.
- There’s some more detail on development in Ballantyne.
- School proms are coming back after two years of upheaval from COVID-19.
- There are ongoing impacts from the war in Ukraine on local businesses — including farmers facing higher fertilizer costs.
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