The Carolina Theatre opened nearly 100 years ago in uptown Charlotte and closed its doors in the late '70s. A massive project to renovate and restore it kicked off in 2017. Foundation for the Carolinas says it should be complete by this fall.
For more, we turn now to Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: The Carolina Theatre was a big deal in its day. Who were some of the acts that went through there?
Tony Mecia: Well, Marshall, it's a little bit before my time. It closed in 1978 after showing Bruce Lee's “The Fists.” You know, it showed movies before that it had vaudeville acts, it had silent movies. It had a number of performers of variety acts who went through there, including Bob Hope, Katherine Hepburn, Elvis Presley, “The Sound of Music” in the 1960s. But yes, it's been closed for about 50 years, mostly in disrepair, but now it looks like it's about to come back to life.
Terry: The foundation bought the theater from the city for $1 back in 2012. Why’s the renovation taken so long?
Mecia: Marshall, well, if you've ever had contractors in your house, you probably know that things come up, issues come up. Renovations sometimes take longer than you anticipate, and they're more expensive. It sounds like that's the case here, especially when you're dealing with a building that's nearly 100 years old. Cathy Bessant of Foundation for the Carolinas, though, says it's now 85% complete and she's confident it will be finished by the fall.
Terry: What’s the overall plan for the project? How much public money is going into it?
Mecia: The idea is to restore it to its former glory and to use it as a meeting place, really, you know, where you can have gatherings, musical acts, panel discussions, that sort of thing. The total cost is estimated to be $88 million for the renovation. Been going on, as you mentioned, since 2017. There is some public money involved. Last year, the North Carolina legislature kicked in $7 million The city kicked in an additional $2 million, which brings its total contribution to about $6.5 million. So there is some public money, but a lot of it is private funds as well.
Terry: Let’s stick with renovations for a moment. We’ve talked in the past about office vacancies in uptown and the possibility of redeveloping those spaces into apartments. But you report uptown is not the only place that could be happening. Where else?
Mecia: Yeah, uptown gets a lot of the attention. And there are a number of majority vacant office buildings uptown. But, yes, if you look at the numbers that, like I did from CoStar, which is a real estate data company, it shows that there are also high vacancy rates in other parts of town too. SouthPark has a couple of offices, the Esplanade and 1 Piedmont Town Center that are about 60% or 70% vacant.
The Esplanade building is especially curious because Childress Klein bought the 10.7-acre site last year for $31 million. So either they have a passion for owning a 40-year-old office building that's three-quarters empty, or there might be something else going on. And just remember this is all going on because of the persistence of remote work and companies deciding that they maybe didn't need as much space as they did previously. So, it's getting hard to rent some of these older office buildings out. So, you could see some redevelopments in some of these.
Terry: Finally, Mecklenburg County has scheduled a public meeting April 11 to discuss flooding in some parts of south Charlotte — and worries that proposed developments will worsen the situation. Any ideas about possible outcomes?
Mecia: It's probably a little bit early to say. This all came from heavy rainfall in January that caused a lot of flooding in south Charlotte. A lot of neighbors were concerned about the pace of development. Are we developing too much? Is it causing too much runoff? I mean, it's not hard to imagine a world in which there are calls to maybe look at some of the stormwater regulations. As parcels are developed, what sort of mitigation measures that they need to have in place to make sure there's not flooding in some of these parts of town? But it's still a little bit early to say, and we'll see where it goes.
Correction: A previous version of this story said the Carolina Theatre would reopen this fall. The renovation will be finished this fall, but the theater likely won't reopen until 2025.
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