It’s that time of the week where we check in on what’s happening in the world of business in the Charlotte area. And this week we’re going to start with real estate. For more, I’m joined now by Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: So, you report there’s buzz about building a new 31-story office tower in South End. Where exactly? And I thought officer towers weren’t being built right now. Didn’t you tell me that?
Tony Mecia: I have told you that before, Marshall. We have discussed that it's a very hard time to build office towers with all the remote work and hybrid work, and sort of uncertainty in the office market. But the one way you can build an office tower is if you have lease commitments. If you have tenants that say they're going into a specific place.
We reported that office brokers in Charlotte are buzzing about the possibility of an office tower at the corner of Carson and Tryon streets. There was an office tower announced there by Crescent Communities a couple of years ago, hasn't gotten off the ground. They've said nothing about it publicly, but it looks as though momentum might be building toward getting those lease commitments that you would need. Some of the tenants mentioned include a large law firm and other financial services type of firms, but no official word just yet.
Terry: Now, we've talked in the past about office vacancies — especially in the uptown area. Didn't former Bank of America's CEO, Hugh McColl, recently weigh in on what to do with empty office towers uptown?
Mecia: He did. Hugh McColl spoke last week at Queen University of Charlotte. They made him available to the media for one-on-one interviews. I asked him what to do about the problem of these empty office towers uptown. He said, there's no easy solution — that really the prices of those need to come down, and then people will come in and invest in them, and they will fill up again.
He also floated an idea that I hadn't heard before. He said, it would be great if we could turn one of these office towers into a high school, have the classes and the lower floors, and then have the teachers live above it. I thought that was a little bit outside the box.
I don't know that there's actually anything in the works on that or if that's even possible, but if Hugh McColl says it, I'm imagining there are some people listening.
Terry: Indeed, indeed. Somebody else who spoke in Charlotte last week was Raj Chetty. He's the Harvard economist whose economic mobility study a decade ago placed Charlotte last in a list of 50 cities. What was he doing in Charlotte, and what did he have to say?
Mecia: Well, he was in town to share some updated data. He and his team have since looked at the numbers from some newer data that show that Charlotte is now 38th out of 50. And he was trying to explain to local business leaders, nonprofit leaders, foundation leaders, what accounts for that improvement.
He said a lot of it had to do with parental employment. In cities where you see employment dropping, that you see less economic mobility. And in cities like Charlotte that really boomed in the '80s, '90s, 2000s — when a lot of these children studied were children — that you saw increases in economic mobility. He also offered some suggestions. He said Charlotte should continue focusing on early childhood development and improving connections between different types of people if we want to keep on moving up.
Terry: All right. Last week at this time, we talked about the debut of the new newsletter from Ted Williams, who founded Charlotte Agenda — now Axios Charlotte. In the first issue, Williams made a public offer to buy The Charlotte Observer for $5 million. Is he serious?
Mecia: He says he's serious about wanting to buy it. This is something that was covered in The Wall Street Journal. He did offer some advice, or some things he said he would do if he were to buy it — which was center around a number of different newsletters, podcasts, a better user experience, a better website, a little more modern design. He did tell me last week that he has not received any response from The Charlotte Observer or its parent company. So I guess we're going to have to wait and see.
I would suggest, Marshall, if people want to put money into local media, I understand there is one local public radio station that is conducting a pledge drive this week.
Terry: Well, that's a nice segue into what's coming up in just a moment, so thank you for that.
Mecia: Good talking to you.
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