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Duke Energy Plaza Headquarters | 40 Story formerly Charlotte Metro Tower


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That'd be pretty cool to hear an official announcement (or leak) by the end of the year.  I seriously doubt though,  that any New Tower for Duke will be as tall or iconic as the current DEC (suitcase handle) Building.  Just seems like everything lately is scaled back, scaled down for cost and delivery time.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth - so any new tower is better than no tower at all....

:tw_confused:

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3 minutes ago, Hushpuppy321 said:

That'd be pretty cool to hear an official announcement (or leak) by the end of the year.  I seriously doubt though,  that any New Tower for Duke will be as tall or iconic as the current DEC (suitcase handle) Building.  Just seems like everything lately is scaled back, scaled down for cost and delivery time.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth - so any new tower is better than no tower at all....

:tw_confused:

 

I doubted anything would be as iconic as BofA Tower. 

 

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1 hour ago, SydneyCarton said:

I'd like to see Duke leave the old building in Raleigh and build a new, huge tower in Charlotte.  Then Amazon and/or Apple could raze the Raleigh tower and redevelop the site.  

This post reminds me of the final scene in the movie “sausage party” 

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Any impact to this potential project due to the state rejecting Duke's rate hike request or would this not be impacted and they need space regardless:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article213100044.html

 

"A state regulator on Friday rejected Duke Energy’s request to raise customers rates in Charlotte, ordering it instead to cut those rates."

Edited by CLT2014
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46 minutes ago, Cadi40 said:

If I had to guess I don’t think they were purely going to finance the possible tower off of a rate hike. 

Agreed.  And this probably makes it more likely they build something big and fancy (since they can do so without the troublesome optics of a rate hike).

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1 hour ago, JBS said:

Agreed.  And this probably makes it more likely they build something big and fancy (since they can do so without the troublesome optics of a rate hike).

Speaking of optics, are there any good comparisons of existing headquarters for large power companies?

Dominion is building a 20-story new headquarters in Richmond, with a decision on whether to build a second tower coming next year. Duke is obviously much larger, but wondering if a 900+ footer would be far beyond any existing HQs in this industry.

Dominion.PNG

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14 minutes ago, Urbs42 said:

Speaking of optics, are there any good comparisons of existing headquarters for large power companies?

Dominion is building a 20-story new headquarters in Richmond, with a decision on whether to build a second tower coming next year. Duke is obviously much larger, but wondering if a 900+ footer would be far beyond any existing HQs in this industry.

Dominion.PNG

Devon Energy Center in Oklahoma City is 850 feet and the tallest power company tower in the US. Duke Energy Center is 2nd tallest at 786 feet. 

IMG_3630.JPG

Edited by Crucial_Infra
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Devon is not an electric utility though - they're in the oil and gas industry. I know Exelon has a 20 story building on Baltimore Harbor. Pacific Gas and Electric is in a 34 story building in SF. Con Edison is in a beautiful 24 story building in Manhattan. Seems like Duke is an outlier in terms of a utility company residing in such a tall tower - but they are the largest by many metrics.

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Anyone think this “radiated Lake Norman water” issue will cause another delay for Duke’s announcement?

I can see the retaliation now: “so all these people are getting cancer and, instead of helping them, you’re building a shrine to yourselves?!?”

Because that’s just people do. Have I mentioned I hate people?

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I really, really doubt it comes to anything but if it did I'm not sure how you justify the project till that issue were solved. We'd be talking major $.

If your family were poisoned and Duke was fighting against putting aside enough$ to resolve the issue you would still be for the project and hate people who weren't? Think about it some more.

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Yes, yes I would. Building a structure to consolidate their offices is not an expense that should be used against a company. Building funds come from a separate bucket than liability funds. Otherwise all the money spent on coal ash mitigation would be holding back this project as well. But the average Joe will not see it that way. They’ll see money spent as money spent, no matter how it is allocated in a business plan.

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 Duke, like BofA or Wells Fargo doesn't really care what the average joe thinks anyway. They're massive corporations. They get sued all the time. Whatever issues Duke is dealing with today will either still be an issue a year from now or it will have beeen replaced with another issue. In other words, it won't affect this tower. The economy might though. 

Edited by Crucial_Infra
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Makes sense to me as long as the companies have adequate reserves to pay the people they've injured. I get skeptical though considering all the tricks they have up their sleeves to avoid large payments. Still I object to your essentially calling these people dumb.

In any case I doubt Duke is responsible or at least they cannot be proven responsible.

Edited by elrodvt
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8 hours ago, Crucial_Infra said:

 The economy might though. 

Do you see the economy tanking before this is announced or started?  Hearing GDP may hit 5%, no signs of it tanking anytime soon.  I know some are worried about a trade war, but many have been worried since POTUS was elected, and he has done nothing but improve the economy. 

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2 hours ago, JacksonH said:

But the trade wars are starting to have an impact.  I can't remember who said this, but the comment was on point:  The economy has improved in spite of Trump, not because of Trump.  Is the unemployment rate lower than it was six months ago?  Yes.  And six months ago, it was lower than six months before that.  And six months before that it was lower than a year earlier.  And a year before that it was lower than the previous year.  This is what you call a trend.  The unemployment rate has been on a steady decline since the beginning of 2010.  Trump took office years after this trend had already begun; he didn't cause it.  https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate   And the stock market rate had been similarly trending upwards.  The upward trend began in 2009.  But I say "had been" because since the beginning of this year, around the time Trump started in earnest with his tariff talk, the Dow Jones has flatlined.  At least for now, he seems to have disrupted the upward trend in the Dow Jones that had been going on for nine years.  (Currently, the Dow Jones is about 2300 points lower than where it was in January.) 

The result of Trump's steel tariffs is that, since the beginning of this year, the cost of steel has increased about 38%.  The intention of the tariffs is to protect 80,000 steel jobs, but there are 900,000 U.S. jobs that depend on steel, so those industries relying on steel are seeing significantly higher costs.  That may imperil those jobs.   And of course in recent days we've been hearing about all the retaliatory tariffs our trading partners are now threatening, which will hurt many more American jobs.  Trump's tax cut was supposedly going to create more jobs and result in worker pay raises, but it turns out that many of the companies benefiting from the tax cuts are using those savings for stock buybacks to further enrich their stockholders, not to add jobs or give pay raises:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/boom-in-share-buybacks-renews-question-of-who-wins-from-tax-cuts-1519900200   In fact, year-to-year real wages have remained unchanged in spite of the tax cuts:  https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/real-average-hourly-earnings-unchanged-from-may-2017-to-may-2018.htm   

Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal and many other publications are reporting, there are now a number of signs that a recession is coming (https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/chance-of-a-recession-in-the-us-keeps-growing/7CB09D87-B08E-4D2B-A468-D75C9E9467B6.html), and the Trump Administration's actions may deepen the pain when that happens, and it's going to hit the middle class the hardest. 

There's been a lot of noise in the last few weeks about immigration which has buried the news that the Trump Administration is trying to undo protections we have from being denied health care coverage for pre-existing conditions (https://www.npr.org/2018/06/08/618263772/trump-administration-move-imperils-pre-existing-condition-protections) .  The middle class ultimately drives the economy.  If wages are stagnant, trade actions have a negative impact on middle class jobs, health care costs are rising and coverage for pre-exisiting conditions go away (a huge blow to the middle class), the larger economy will suffer.  And that building boom in Charlotte will come to a halt.

Not to derail this thread, but the DOW and the entire market skyrocketed when Trump was elected.   Obama had 8 years of very slow growth,  GDP always around 2%.  Tax cuts have done nothing but put more money in the middle class pockets and dont even get me started on all the regulations he has eliminated.   I know Duke Energy might not fall into this category,  but FPL and many other utility companies have returned money to the consumers with the tax cuts that were put into place. My electric bill is about $40 a month lower than same time frame last year.

2 hours ago, Cadi40 said:

Terrible news for Charlotte and cities alike.

Propaganda 

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