Before we get too far into the new year, let’s take a brief moment to look back — this time at some of the top Charlotte-area business news of 2025. To do that, Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joined our Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: Let’s start with what could be the biggest such story of 2025, the fall of Sycamore Brewing. This is a story that’s still playing out, right?
Tony Mecia: Last month, you had the big news that the co-founder of Sycamore Brewing was arrested, charged with some sexual crimes involving a 13-year-old. The business, Sycamore Brewing, just collapsed basically overnight. People stopped going to the taproom, grocery stores pulled the beer from the shelves. We'll see what happens in 2026.
It's hard to continue to survive when you have very little revenue coming in. The brewery's other co-founder, the wife of the man who was arrested, put out a statement this week and said that the taproom in South End will close on Jan. 5 and that they'll try to figure out where to go from here. So still a lot of questions about what's going to happen with that business.
Terry: Over now to some of the economic development that happened last year. There was a lot. What are some of the highlights?
Mecia: The economic development office of the City of Charlotte put out some figures a couple of weeks ago. They said there were 15 big job announcements in 2025, totaling about 4,000 jobs. Now you might say there have been a lot of those in recent years. There really haven't been. In 2023 and 2024, there were just five such announcements. So we had 15 in all of last year.
Some of the bigger ones were Scout Motors, the automotive company that's putting its headquarters in Plaza Midwood with about 1,200 jobs. Some of the other big ones were Maersk, the shipping company with about 500. Citi with more than 500 jobs. So you have a bunch of big job announcements that will start getting hired for in 2026. And so that's some good momentum for our region.
Terry: Staying on the subject of development, the passage of the transit plan and related tax increase were also huge.
Mecia: Yeah, I think that was one of the big stories of 2025. This is something that the city and leaders in our region had worked on for a long time to try to get the authority to get that transit plan passed and then having voters approve it in November. It’s going to be the largest infrastructure project in state history — rail lines, bus improvements, roads, sidewalks, and that's going to play out over decades.
Terry: What about the announced merger of Queens University of Charlotte and Elon University? Does that qualify as a business story?
Mecia: I think it does. My definition of business stories are really anything having to do with work or with money, and this has both. You saw that in September, Queens and Elon agreed to merge. Still not a lot of details about what exactly is going to happen. A lot of times, of course, in mergers, you do have job losses. Again nothing's been announced, but this should really start coming into focus a little bit in 2026 and we might get some answers to some of the questions about what exactly that merger looks like.
Terry: Finally, I want to make sure we bring up an iconic business leader we lost in 2025. Who was Doug Lebda and what made him significant in Charlotte?
Mecia: Doug Lebda was one of Charlotte's best-known CEOs. He founded the company LendingTree and had been its CEO for nearly 30 years. In starting up LendingTree here in Charlotte, he proved that this was a place that you could build an entrepreneurial culture, an entrepreneurial business, a tech business. He was really an inspiration to a lot of tech people and entrepreneurial people in Charlotte.
Unfortunately, he passed away in an off-road utility vehicle accident at the age of 55. Certainly was a bright light, sorry to see that extinguished.
