Another one of Charlotte’s professional sports teams has been sold. The Charlotte Checkers announced on Monday that Florida-based Zawyer Sports & Entertainment has acquired a controlling interest in the hockey team.
Joining me now to talk more about it and other business stories is Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: Ok. Tony, I’m not a sports guy. But this is the third professional team in Charlotte that’s changed hands in the last year after the Hornets and then the Knights. What’s going on?
Tony Mecia: Yeah, Marshall, I don't know if there's necessarily anything in the water. I think it's really just, sort of, a little bit of a coincidence that happened for a variety of reasons. In this case, the longtime owner of the checkers, Michael Kahn, he has owned the team for nearly 20 years. [It] sounded like he just wanted to go a different direction. He'll stay on as a minority owner.
Terry: Are any changes being planned for the Checkers?
Mecia: The new owners have not announced any changes. They say they intend to keep the day-to-day operations. That's typically what new owners say, but over time, they typically like to make their mark on an organization. So I think it wouldn't be a surprise, eventually, to see some sort of changes.
One thing that caught my eye that was sort of interesting, is that the new owner said in an interview with the Charlotte Business Journal that they would be open to discussions about a practice ice facility as part of a public-private partnership. So that's, I think, another trend we're seeing is publicly financed sports venues. So that could be in the offering, as well.
Terry: Let’s go now to uptown where a well-known office building, 400 South Tryon, could soon be torn down. That's the white, boxy building with the gold windows. What do we know about the plans?
Mecia: Nothing that's really been publicly disclosed, but there was a research report that came out last week from real estate giant JLL that just sort of offhandedly mentioned that 400 South Tryon was being planned for demolition. I have not been able to get with the owners of that building, but the speculation in the real estate community is that because a lot of these office towers are vacant or mostly vacant, that maybe it's a better idea to start from scratch and build something new rather than try to repurpose what's already there.
Terry: Uptown boosters and developers have been saying for a while that the only way to deal with vacant office buildings no one wants to rent post-COVID might be to tear them down. Could this be the start of us actually seeing that?
Mecia: It could be, you know, it's a little premature to say. I mean, the traditional thinking on demolition is that the demolition costs of a skyscraper are so large. And this is a 33-story building. Those costs would be so high that it makes any replacement financially unviable. The costs that you would have to pass along in apartment rents, for example, would be very large. And so that wouldn't work. So I would be very interested to find out what exactly the numbers might look like on a deal like this. And I think a lot of other people would be, too.
Terry: Let’s end this week with a topic we’ve discussed many times recently — artificial intelligence. You report AI will no longer be allowed in federal court filings in Charlotte. What’s behind that change?
Mecia: Yes, seven federal judges based in Charlotte in the Western District of North Carolina put out an order last month saying that, going forward, lawyers are going to have to certify that they did their own research, that they didn't rely on ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence programs to write the briefs.
I believe this is in response to some news stories that have been out there nationally — none in Charlotte — but in other parts of the country, in which courts have found legal filings that cited cases that do not exist.
Artificial intelligence, as many people know, tends to make up things if it doesn't know the answer. That has happened in some court cases, so I think they want to guard against that possibility.
Terry: Well, you and I never make up things. That's why we're never going to be replaced by AI, right?
Mecia: We're the real deal, Marshall.
Support for WFAE's BizWorthy comes from The Original Mattress Factory and our listeners.
