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Discovery Place


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1 hour ago, Desert Power said:

The stretch will be pretty impressive if this and the library both get redone with residential units.

Didn't realize that Discovery Place is running what I think used to be a daycare as a school for educators.  

Yes it used to be the BofA corporate daycare and DP bought it when BofA decided to stop offering this benefit to Charlotte employees and uses it for science/education classes for educators as you mentioned. 

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9 hours ago, sakami said:

Yes it used to be the BofA corporate daycare and DP bought it when BofA decided to stop offering this benefit to Charlotte employees and uses it for science/education classes for educators as you mentioned. 

BofA donated the building in full to DP, which was a pretty significant donation

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2018/05/18/bank-of-america-donates-uptown-property-for.html

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8 hours ago, Hushpuppy321 said:

Didn’t realize Discovery Place was the Top Museum draw in North Carolina.  Gonna have to look that up.  I’d love to see how the City thinks it can afford such a cost.  

I think that is a suspect claim.  It's true yes, but I'd venture to estimate 70% of that number or more is because of local school district field trips.  With out those not sure on the viability of the place.  I think should be transformed into something that pulls in much more adhoc visitors .  I do consider the three LARGE parcels they control underutilized and a 'waste'.  Any plan I feel should sell off some land to private developers to help finance the expansion and updating of the DP.

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8 minutes ago, navigator319 said:

I think that is a suspect claim.  It's true yes, but I'd venture to estimate 70% of that number or more is because of local school district field trips.  With out those not sure on the viability of the place.  I think should be transformed into something that pulls in much more adhoc visitors .  I do consider the three LARGE parcels they control underutilized and a 'waste'.  Any plan I feel should sell off some land to private developers to help finance the expansion and updating of the DP.

Its not anymore. I said "was." NC Museum of Natural Sciences surpassed it with their latest expansion. Now its #2.

With a massive expansion of both uptown location and Myers Park (Maybe moving to Southpark) location, it should easily surpass Raleigh, which also has to be 70% local school district field trips, just like practically all science museums. 

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40 minutes ago, tozmervo said:
9 hours ago, sakami said:

Yes it used to be the BofA corporate daycare and DP bought it when BofA decided to stop offering this benefit to Charlotte employees and uses it for science/education classes for educators as you mentioned. 

BofA donated the building in full to DP, which was a pretty significant donation

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2018/05/18/bank-of-america-donates-uptown-property-for.html

Yeah, that is pretty significant.  Such low density usages on that block right now.

Curious if the thinking is to renovate the site where the museum is or rebuild there?

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21 minutes ago, Desert Power said:

Yeah, that is pretty significant.  Such low density usages on that block right now.

Curious if the thinking is to renovate the site where the museum is or rebuild there?

While its not really historic, the former BoA daycare block is pretty significant to Uptown's rebirth. According to the BoA Community Redevelopment guys (I heard this from the late Dennis Rash) back in the day (I don't remember what year), BoA viewed the construction of the  off-site daycare as an important symbol to the public that BoA believed Uptown was safe enough to be a place where corporate folks would leave their kids for the day -- thinking that Uptown was  safe enough for little kids was apparently quite radical back in the 1980s.   I hear access to the daycare was a cherished perk of working in the 'death star' and folks were bummed that Monyhan did away with it following the Countrywide / Merrill trauma a decade ago, but from the perspective of the CDC folks, it had done its job.

[I am in no way suggesting that its important to preserve the day care property, I just wanted to tell the story of the anachronistic site]

Edited by kermit
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34 minutes ago, Desert Power said:

Yeah, that is pretty significant.  Such low density usages on that block right now.

Curious if the thinking is to renovate the site where the museum is or rebuild there?

I've been told before that they need the two blocks, because all the different uses they have don't work in one building.  The most likely scenario is the museum gets torn down and rebuilt a lot more vertical on Tryon.

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1 hour ago, ricky_davis_fan_21 said:

I've been told before that they need the two blocks, because all the different uses they have don't work in one building.  The most likely scenario is the museum gets torn down and rebuilt a lot more vertical on Tryon.

How far along is this?  Would it be on a 5 year timeframe to start construction or 10 years out?  I haven’t heard too much about this project. 

But, I do like the idea of a signature museum/science center (an aquarium would be cool too). Along with the library, this could help re-shape N Tryon.

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See if my math is correct.  If a 100 unit condo was built atop a new Discovery Place and if the average price per condo was $500,000, the average tax would be around $5,000 per year, or $500,000 annually.  That would bee a nice drop into CharMecks tax bucket.

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See if my math is correct.  If a 100 unit condo was built atop a new Discovery Place and if the average price per condo was $500,000, the average tax would be around $5,000 per year, or $500,000 annually.  That would bee a nice drop into CharMecks tax bucket.

I’d wager average would be at least 600k, maybe more. Uptown has exceeded that price point unless someone got a bargain on the air rights, and weren’t responsible for building the foundation.


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3 hours ago, nakers2 said:

I'm a bit late to the party, but I support a total rebuild of the discovery place. For 400 million you can get pretty creative with the site use. It is both fortunate from a historical preservation perspective, but unfortunate from a site use perspective that we have arguably one of Charlotte's more beautiful churches occupying the corner, but a new building, if done right, can really complement the structure and utilize it for photogenic appeal. I think since we can't really do a wider structure, a taller, or deeper building is called for. Dig down a few floors, and go up a few floors. Add an aquarium element underground, utilize the main floor for either some miscellaneous permanent exhibits and food, or use this as the opportunity to utilize a whole floor for traveling exhibitions, or perhaps even the ability to host two smaller exhibits at once. Segregate a whole floor, or part of a floor for more children's oriented exhibits so that adult visitors can avoid, and then provide a variety of exhibitions on the remaining floor spaces. 

In regards to the Discovery Place Nature Museum, it's just classic NIMBYism, plain and simple. Live in an urban area but don't want to deal with traffic, move next to a park, but don't appreciate when people from across the city want to use it. I'd fancy a guess that a large chunk of the area's population, especially kids, have utilized this facility. 

My family has had a membership to Discovery Place Science off and on for 9 years and we have visited the museum countless times with children of all ages. I understand wanting to decrease the footprint but I hope at the same time a lot of thought is put into a functional layout for families with small children. The more floors the more elevators needed to move hundreds of strollers up and down through the museum. I found it miserable when attending with my 3 kids parking on the top floor of the deck to take an elevator down only to have to take yet another elevator up to explore the second floor, and doing all of that over again when it was time to leave.  My kids are old enough now these kinds of hiccups aren’t a problem for me but this is the kind of thing that can turn people off from visiting a second time. 


And anecdotally out of my 2 kids in CMS only 1 has attended 1 field trip to DP. Maybe it is kids from outside of CMS pumping up the attendance, which is great. 

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14 hours ago, tozmervo said:

I have a lot of resentment toward the neighbors. If you drive down Sterling, it's one lot after another that was clear-cut for massive houses with a ton of space dedicated to driveway and garages. These people are holding up development of a really positive project that impacts the entire county. 

For example....

Screen Shot 2020-01-23 at 9.12.11 AM.png

Screen Shot 2020-01-23 at 9.11.28 AM.png

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