2 min read February 2023 — Charlotte is a major city and commercial hub in North Carolina and was ranked as one of the 14 best cities to live in the US. Invest: spoke with Tracy Dodson, assistant city manager and economic development director for the City of Charlotte, about the market changes, the uniqueness of Charlotte and the city’s outlook moving forward.
What have been the key highlights for the city over the last 12 months, and how might 2023 be a little bit different?
It’s really exciting what happened in Charlotte in 2022. It’s all about the resiliency and the opportunities that the city has. We had a lot of announcements like the headquarters of Columbus McKinnon, Silicon Valley Bank and the ACC headquarters. Albemarle’s announcement in December was a big win because their story is so great. They made a large $200 million investment in our city and in a direction that we feel like we have an opportunity to grow, which is in R&D. When we’re talking to companies that have an R&D component, they want to know that if they bring the talent here and that talent leaves, whether they have somewhere else to go. It was also a big win for the university area and a great opportunity to collaborate with UNC Charlotte.
Charlotte has emerged as a sports city. The new ACC headquarters was a special pursuit and we felt it was important to retain the conference in North Carolina. We were also so fortunate to have the President’s Cup, which was a great opportunity to show off the city. We hosted the local president of Vinfast who made a major investment in Raleigh. We have also been intentional in building out our connectivity around electric vehicles. The other sports announcement is our extension of the Hornets’ agreement to 2045.
Also, the Pearl Innovation District with Atrium is a key highlight. We made a $75 million public investment. Small businesses will come from the innovation that happens here. They started to talk about the proximity to the Atrium campus. IRCAD was also announced which will be the North American headquarters for this company. This is considered the “cathedral of surgical training.” As they go further into the innovation campus, they’re starting to hone in more on the life science industry for robotics and manufacturing spillover. So, looking back at 2022, a lot of excitement, and the sky’s the limit.
How have ongoing market conditions shifted any priorities that the city is looking at?
Pricing has slowed some projects down, and the two big things on the spec side are the cost and speculation about office space. A lot of employers are trying to understand how much space they need. The momentum of inbound activity hasn’t changed. It’s a little bit slower in the decision-making process. We’ve got a major tenant right now that’s spending their first five or six months understanding their space. We’ve been having a lot of conversations about housing affordability. I’m not seeing a slowdown in the influx of out-of-town. The developers and investors are still interested in housing, so there’s good momentum — some projects have shifted but no slowdown. What I’m watching closely from an office standpoint is our new versus old dynamic. We’ve been very fortunate to start a lot of new office projects. South End is still very popular. But where the market and the office tenants have wanted to go is toward new construction. With inflation going up, some of the second-generation and beyond buildings have vacancies. With the interest rate environment and public-private partnerships (P3’s), the city could see office conversions to more residential. The Hornets project and the bus transportation center are critical to creating more momentum in our uptown and pushing mobility and transportation as an amenity. We’ll need to combine these things to create these activated and enlivening parts of our downtown that are attractive to people.
What would you identify as the key challenges in Charlotte?
Mobility is a key challenge in Charlotte. Mobility is so critical to everything and everyone agrees that to keep up with our growth, we have to keep up with mobility. Mobility is the discussion point of 2023. We have to solidify our partnerships in the city and the region around mobility because it’s not just about Charlotte but regional connections. We want to talk about how to connect to Gaston County, to connect to Cabarrus County and beyond.
The airport and economic development are also significant. We have to continue to build out a multimodal system. People now understand transit more, but we still have to navigate the state and the voters. It’s a big piece to chew but I’ll applaud the mayor for being all in. All the mobility projects are interconnected. The bus facility is all about building out a system as well as the gateway station that is just as connected to the region. We’ve talked about the bus facility and what we could do there with Amtrak to connect the region. I’ve had a lot of conversations at the state level about what happens when somebody can ride rail in from Salisbury. It’s different from where we’re talking about the silver line and things like that. We have to find the right way to bring in new partners.
What is your outlook for the coming years?
We will continue to watch the office market and the pressures of the general economy. I want to see some of our P3s that I consider transformative projects like the transportation center, Gateway, and Eastland that we broke ground on in 2022, continue to move forward. One thing that has evolved in recent years is that we work in a different collaborative way. We engage internally within the city and externally with our other partners. We are much more strategic and deliberate about how we approach these segments of our community. It takes a long time to change how people approach their work. For example, an engineer’s job is to design a sidewalk, but you have to think about that connecting to jobs. Is that connected to housing? Is that connected to food? Another example is continuing to build out our HIRE Charlotte initiative. We have five different priorities and we are strategic and proactive. We know where Atrium and the Pearl are going. We’re trying to become much more efficient in that rather than reacting when Honeywell comes to town and suddenly, we’re a tech town. We’re trying to get ahead of that and have the business plans for our target industries as well as make sure we have alignment and are upskilling our workforce. We want to have all resources for the community that are easy to find.
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