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Here are some of the other stories catching our attention.

Duke Details Plans For 40-Story Tower On South Tryon Street

Credit Duke Energy / TVS Design
Duke Energy's planned 40-story office tower will be on South Tryon Street, next to St. Peter's Catholic Church and the Gantt Center.

Duke Energy says it will start construction at the end of April on what is now a planned 40-story office tower across from its headquarters in uptown Charlotte.

The new tower will be built on about two acres across South Tryon Street from the 48-story Duke Energy Center.  A rendering by Atlanta architecture firm TVS Design shows the glass tower soaring over the Gantt Center on one side and St. Peter's Catholic Church on the other.

It's part of Duke's plan to reduce its uptown office space by 25 percent, spokesman Neil Nissan said.

“Over the next couple years, we're going to consolidate our space in uptown Charlotte,” Nissan said. “We're going to move from four buildings to two buildings, and we're going to reduce our overall footprint from 2 million to 1.5 million square feet.”

[Related Content: Duke Hopes Optimist Site Will Spur Ideas, Draw Talent]

The tower at 509 S. Tryon Street will have 40 stories, one more than when it was first announced last December. It eventually will house 4,000 of Duke's 6,000 Charlotte employees.

Duke will still have about 1,600 employees in the Duke Energy Center, plus 400 in a recently opened innovation center at Optimist Hall, just outside uptown.

CLOSING THREE OFFICES

Employees will move out of three other buildings uptown. Duke is selling both a former headquarters building at Church and Stonewall streets — which opened in 1977 — and a 1960s building on South College Street near the Charlotte Convention Center.  

The company also plans to get out of its lease at 400 South Tryon Street.

Duke bought the land – currently, a surface parking lot – in 2017 for a reported $27.5 million.

Duke says the 1 million-square-foot tower will include a seven-level above-ground parking garage with 1000 spaces and about 25,000 square feet of shops. Duke will be the sole office tenant.

The company has not said how much it plans to spend on the new tower. Childress Klein is developing the building with Duke. 

Construction will take about three years and employ about 1,000 people. It's expected to open in 2022.

David Boraks previously covered climate change and the environment for WFAE. See more at www.wfae.org/climate-news. He also has covered housing and homelessness, energy and the environment, transportation and business.