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Duke Energy Center - 48 Story Office Tower in Charlotte

dubone

By dubone
in Charlotte

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Andyc545 Burg

Andyc545

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What surprising news. There was no whif about this at all on here, except the facts that Duke execs would occupy the top floors below the Wachovia execs. What a great settlement; tower goes from just a Wells Fargo tower to a Duke HQ building, and one that is recognizable and prominent over there old piece of crap. Also, Wells still owns it and is just leasing it to Duke so they still make money off of it. That would also make sense for the lighting scheme. I had figured it was just part of the Wells/Wach arts deal, but it makes sense now (sort of a long term replacement for the 277 Pickup Sticks). It says that Duke will continue to occupy their old HQ, just isolate some of the small office space scattered throughout the city. I can't help but think that with 500k sq ft plus the old HQ that they have room to add jobs down the road, although they may be consolidating their call center up in the Univ Research Park down here, but I don't know.

I wonder if this means that Wells will renew its lease on Wach/Wells 1? I thought that the new tower was an attempt to move all leased space into office space they owned. Interesting.

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Spartan Gigalopolis

Spartan

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I am guessing this was figuratively speaking, but WFAE used the phrasing that suggested that Duke paid to have their name "lit up"on the tower. But my initial reaction was that there would be a Duke logo on the building... I wonder....

That would explain the trippy lights they've been testing on the side of this building. It matches up with the light-art thing on the side of their current building.

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abttown Whistle-Stop

abttown

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This may have been discussed when Wachovia was taken over by Wells (and I apologize if it has), but does anyone know what's going to happen to the trading floor in this tower? I suppose it could be transformed into a fancy food court with a nice, high ceiling! Seriously though, if anyone knows anything about this area of the tower, I would greatly appreciate the info.

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dubone Megalopolis

dubone

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The will not be a trading floor in this building. Additionally, the Corporate and Investment Banking division that was going to be taking up a lot of the floors in this building is being decimated by layoffs as the business has seen major losses.

I am not sure if they retained the structure of it, which could be used for any number of things, but regardless it will not be a trading floor.

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nonillogical Burg

nonillogical

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At night I'm pretty sure you can see the 'trading floor' on the north side. Anyway it was already well out of the ground when that happened and the pace didn't slow, so there's no way they re-designed anything that significant during that time. And yeah some kind of food court seems likely, but I wonder what creative uses it might have if it were a public space.

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monsoon Gigalopolis

monsoon

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There would be no reason they couldn't just line it with cubes and sit people in there. It would be the quickest and cheapest way to get the floor space to generate some sort revenue and I have seen this done often where unique floor space had been built where the original purpose disappeared. I have not seen this place up close, but food courts are not real profitable unless they can either get the tenants of the building to subsidize it as a place for their employees or there is very easy and recognizable reason for people to come off the street to eat there.

Maybe Duke can start selling electric appliances and heat pumps in there as it used to do in it's current HQ building. (not sure if they still do or not)

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maratletter Unincorporated Area

maratletter

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The move by Duke Energy to the Wachovia/Wells building is brilliant. To see light, when most others are struggling in darkness, is true leadership.

Soon, the Duke Energy building and the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte are going to have amazing opening ceremonies. They will be spectacular. The truth is, we as a city are incredibly fortunate that these two massive projects are going to be completed in such a timely fashion in these difficult financial times. A lot has changed for everyone in the world in the last 5 months; in the last 5 minutes.

I am constantly amazed at the New Deal structures that were built by our forefathers in the 1930's. These projects are amazing in their simplicity, beauty, function, construction materials (real stones), and the workmanship that is sometimes unsurpassed.

In the little town of perhaps 200 people that my Daddy grew up in about 55 miles south of here, there is still to this day a perfectly functioning WPA built gymnasium constructed out of stones that is out off of Highway 9. It will give you chills to behold. It looks to me sort of like a miniature version of the Cameron Indoor Stadium on Duke University's campus.

This gym was built out in the middle of nowhere, and it is out in the middle of nowhere to this day. In a thousand years, it will still be out in the middle of nowhere. And in that year 3009, a young boy will be shooting some hoops in that same gym. Hopefully, he will be happily talking with his friends about how the people in 2009 built something in Charlotte that is just as amazing. He and his friends will later that afternoon fly to Charlotte in their hovercrafts (as promised to us about 50 years ago, if I recall).

We will survive and we will eventually prosper. It may take years to recover. But in the end and in the beginning, our self worth is not even remotely defined by our net worth. I'm still standing.

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grodney Town

grodney

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Re: the new 440 S. Church building, a bullet point in the memo I got says: "The move out of 400 S. Tryon will span a few years. When completed, the company’s presence in downtown Charlotte will be in three buildings: College Street Center, Energy Center and 550 S. Tryon."

Re: the trading floor, Duke does have a "trading floor" in the current Energy Center building. I think this was a much bigger deal back in the 2000-ish time-frame, when energy trading was big dollars, before the whole energy meltdown (oooh, bad word when trying to get a new Nuke plant built). But anyway, I think they still use that space as such. I have no idea whether they would move it to the tower, or whether it could even begin to fill that planned space in the tower.

Re: naming, how could they pass up the "Duke Power Tower"??? Oh, because it's Duke Energy, not Power. Dang.

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monsoon Gigalopolis

monsoon

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There would be no reason they couldn't just line it with cubes and sit people in there. It would be the quickest and cheapest way to get the floor space to generate some sort revenue and I have seen this done often where unique floor space had been built where the original purpose disappeared. ..
....

Re: the trading floor, Duke does have a "trading floor" in the current Energy Center building. I think this was a much bigger deal back in the 2000-ish time-frame, when energy trading was big dollars, before the whole energy meltdown (oooh, bad word when trying to get a new Nuke plant built). ....

Indeed. Enron actually built a trading floor in Charlotte in the early 2000s though it was not in downtown. It was completed a few months before that company blew up. That floor was closed down and has since been converted to standard office space. I think cubes in fact.
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UrbanFuture Whistle-Stop

UrbanFuture

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The midrise portion of the newly minted Duke Energy Tower was/is designed to house trading floors at least on the very top floor of the midrise from the tour I got a while back. Maybe they will take part or all of that? I wonder if Wells still had claim and plans for it. Its sounding a bit like Wells will be doing some serious "cost optimization" in Charlotte and will be scaling back considerably on space needs.

Unfortunate, all around.

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