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500 West Trade (14 story apartments on site of former Polk Building)


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On 2/2/2018 at 9:46 AM, AP3 said:

I hope the mid-rises with high-rises migrate to South End, NoDa, and Plaza Midwood.


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I think this would look good for South End. Just maybe not Uptown. Meh, I guess we shall see. I should probably reserve judgment until it’s built.

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On 2/2/2018 at 1:12 PM, CLT2014 said:

That's why 80% of our transplants move here, so it is what you get. Ask the average person why they moved to Charlotte and usually you hear either "It is warmer than my hometown up North" or "The cost of living is SO much better than where I moved from. Here I can get a 2 bedroom apartment for less than $1,800 per month and buy a 3,000 square foot house for under $400k in a great school district!" Other than transplants to the Charlotte area from rural towns in the Carolinas who DO move to Charlotte for an upgrade in sophistication and culture, many of the transplants from out of state come here specifically because the city is relatively cheap and gladly trade the sophistication of their older and larger city up north for a vinyl tract house.

It is the same stuff people say for moving to Phoenix, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Dallas-Fort Worth, Boise, Tampa, etc... and any other city with a large amount of transplants that are hunting lower cost of living and warmer climates. If our city didn't have those two things going for it, people probably wouldn't be leaving cities like Pittsburgh, Boston, New York, Philly, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, etc... for Charlotte. Our airport would have about 350 less flights per day likely if it was not a cheap airport for American to connect tourist fare vacation travelers... again, we are a hub due to geography and being cheap.

Understand but it would be nice if we moved towards being valued primarily for something other than being cheaper.  Personal preference but I don't want to be cheapest and would happily cede that ground to Birmingham or whatever. I want to be in the middle ground and would happily pay for a nicer airport design or a zoo or parks or a decent downtown etc...  I wouldn't put Boise in your list BTW. That is an interesting place to live with decent downtown and the great outdoors. Like a mini Denver.

Regarding the airport I love all the directs but being a hub leads to high prices. It would be a lot better if we had more of a mix. No idea how to get there though. Maybe  our leaders think price isn't that critical when (i assume) it is primarily used for business embarks?

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I wouldn’t want this in SouthEnd or NoDa. We have lots and lots and lots of space uptown. I can’t even stand looking at pictures of 1st Ward. 

 

Uptown doesnt have to be all 25+ floors everywhere. This building and other low rises will force developers to build 25+ floor towers uptown. 

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Regarding the height I think an optimistic way of looking at this is that ten years ago a proposal on this lot most likely wouldn't have topped five or six stories. If you look at everything announced in the last couple of years a vast majority of them have been ten stories or taller save for a small handful. I'm sure in another ten years we will see regular announcements starting at 15 to 20 stories and going up from there. The cost of the land is one of the biggest factors in determining how tall the building will be and while there has been a steady increase in price/acre relatively speaking land is still somewhat affordable uptown which is why we're getting a ton of ten to twenty floor towers. Just a guess here, but I would guess there is still room for a few dozen towers uptown without having to bulldoze anything significant.

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Regarding the height I think an optimistic way of looking at this is that ten years ago a proposal on this lot most likely wouldn't have topped five or six stories.


Actually, almost exactly ten years ago (before the market went bust) we were discussing two 27(ish) story apartment buildings. Not that that matters now. I can’t find any renderings online now, but I remember them being blue glass.


I've never heard of this project having TWO tall towers. It was originally either a 10 or a 20~ story tower, but two 20+ story towers will be great density near the Gateway Station, and filling in the gap east of Gateway Village. I also agree that it will be a good step just west of the Vue.

I count ~25 stories on the Trade St tower, and the Wilkes and 5th Street tower appears a bit taller.

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3 hours ago, AuLukey said:

 


Actually, almost exactly ten years ago (before the market went bust) we were discussing two 27(ish) story apartment buildings. Not that that matters now. I can’t find any renderings online now, but I remember them being blue glass.


 

 

Yeah, a proposal from before the recession. A time when a TON of proposals in this country were fueled by rampant speculation and were highly unrealistic. We also had One Charlotte and Trump Charlotte. A lot of proposals around that time had little to no hope of becoming reality.

You're missing the bigger picture I was attempting to paint with that post. My point is that if you put a pin at the square and a pencil on this lot and drew a circle around uptown how many empty lots and one to two story buildings are there. Now think how many there were ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. There is a natural progression where as more lots get developed those that remain become more valuable thus requiring taller projects to make the purchase of that land viable. Now, I don't want to insult as I am well aware you understand this, but in the new real estate reality I just don't believe we are going to see ridiculous, over the top proposals in the middle of an area full of five story buildings. Things are much more reserved today. As available land uptown becomes more scarce the 30, 40, 50 proposals will come. 

TLDR: I don't think those 20+ story proposals back then were ever going to happen. I would love to see them now, but proposals are much more conservative now. We will get that kind of stuff again further and further out, we just need to build up to it.

Edited by go_vertical
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^oh, I know. It was just a coincidence I was trying to point out because you said ten years ago. Wasn’t attempting to detract from your point.

Side note, man those buildings were way more attractive than the current proposal (that says a lot coming from a guy who is overly annoyed by all the blue glass in Uptown.) I wish they had just unshelved that design instead.

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On 2/2/2018 at 11:52 AM, cjd5050 said:

Wow, I look at the location and see the exact opposite.  Walking distance to a grocery store, a large park and to BB&T.  All with stunning views of uptown if you're on the right side of the building.  Trash v. treasure I suppose.    

Personally I think this is an indication of just how much the apartment market is softening. I heard there are some buildings looking at giving away 2-3 months free of rent. 

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(Discussion forums have a range of opinions, not everything can be instant consensus).   

I'm not pleased with this project because for 19 pages I have expressed my desire to keep the Polk/Coddington Building.     Mainly because I didn't grow up in this city and have seen how great old buildings can be when adapted for reuse and dislike how few of those exist in Charlotte as it helps give some interest to cities that entirely new projects can't deliver.

The point of comparison is this developer's own project under construction at Stonewall and South is 50% taller, so it seems more a function of the market and not the location.  

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34 minutes ago, ricky_davis_fan_21 said:

Personally I think this is an indication of just how much the apartment market is softening. I heard there are some buildings looking at giving away 2-3 months free of rent. 

The average age for millennials is moving towards Late 20's and early 30's... so some are likely considering their first condo, townhome, or SFH purchase + some family creation. 

As an apartment developer, I'd be concerned that the next group of renters, Generation Z, is 7% smaller than the millennials. This smaller co-hort of people is already being reflected in declining high school and college enrollment (which will mean less and less newly graduated college grads looking for that entry level job at BofA or Wells and an apartment in SouthEnd). Not all millennials will convert to ownership, but many will, and there will be less and less Gen Z behind them graduating college with a salary that can afford fancy apartments in youthful trendy areas as many projects start to deliver in 2020+. 

https://knoema.com/egyydzc/us-population-by-age-and-generation

Edited by CLT2014
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Demographic trends have all trump cards. They always have all the trump cards. Everyone else in the game is Dummy hand.

35 minutes ago, CLT2014 said:

The average age for millennials is moving towards Late 20's and early 30's... so some are likely considering their first condo, townhome, or SFH purchase + some family creation. 

As an apartment developer, I'd be concerned that the next group of renters, Generation Z, is 7% smaller than the millennials. This smaller co-hort of people is already being reflected in declining high school and college enrollment (which will mean less and less newly graduated college grads looking for that entry level job at BofA or Wells and an apartment in SouthEnd). Not all millennials will convert to ownership, but many will, and there will be less and less Gen Z behind them graduating college with a salary that can afford fancy apartments in youthful trendy areas as many projects start to deliver in 2020+. 

https://knoema.com/egyydzc/us-population-by-age-and-generation

 

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2 hours ago, CLT2014 said:

As an apartment developer, I'd be concerned that the next group of renters, Generation Z, is 7% smaller than the millennials. This smaller co-hort of people is already being reflected in declining high school and college enrollment (which will mean less and less newly graduated college grads looking for that entry level job at BofA or Wells and an apartment in SouthEnd). Not all millennials will convert to ownership, but many will, and there will be less and less Gen Z behind them graduating college with a salary that can afford fancy apartments in youthful trendy areas as many projects start to deliver in 2020+. 

Not sure I agree here.  I think a smaller Generation Z would be felt in some areas but not all and it's unlikely to be Charlotte.  Cities in the rust belt or flyover states sure....but not here.  IMHO.  

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15 minutes ago, kermit said:

To put some numbers on this, there are only about 56,000 housing units within 3 miles of uptown. What proportion of metro Charlotte's 2.4 million would choose to live in that area if they could afford it? If that number is just 5% then we need to double the number of housing units in this area to meet demand.

Ah, I see what you mean here. I definitely think more of Charlotte would like to live close to Uptown, hence the high prices. Maybe developers just want to back off so they can maintain their price premium and not de-value their product while the demand catches up with this new supply. More supply in this area would be beneficial for the metro area, I just wish more of that supply was property one could actually purchase rather than rent. 

I also don't think all the home purchase growth is going to be suburban single family homes, hence I mentioned condo/townhome. I think much of the demand will shift toward purchasing urban condos and townhomes. I think many millennials by their 30's will get tired of landlords and big corporate apartment complexes where you move when your rent goes up, not being able to paint walls, having new neighbors all the time, etc... Hopefully their is a breaking point where more of these buildings are built as condos and townhomes so people can actually own rather than be lifelong renters if they want to get into the Uptown area.  

Edited by CLT2014
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1 hour ago, KJHburg said:

Saving the facade only is doable but if the public wants that, shouldn't they be willing to contribute public dollars?  The facade has been crumbling for 15 years to the point that it literally was falling on the sidewalk/scaffolding.  It's hard to expect NWR to be responsible for the extraordinary cost of the restoration of this building unless Charlotte changes development standards.  Across the intersection is The Mint, a craphole of a project that the city approved.  Where is the incentive for NWR to dump a ton of it's own money into a restoration when their project is already exponentially better than the neighboring J&W dorms/parking lot and The Mint?  If the city values historic buildings (designated so or otherwise), they can also contribute financially.  Remember, the restoration of the Carolina Theater was made possible by the sale of the building/property for $1 by the city.  I'd love for the Coddington/Polk building to be saved but the city and other advocates need to put their money (and design standards) where their mouth is...

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