Two former industrial buildings on the northern edge of the NoDa neighborhood slated for adaptive reuse will soon be under new ownership.
A developer is under contract to acquire what's being called the Station House and Trailhead properties, at 4100 and 4212 Raleigh St., directly adjacent to the Lynx Blue Line Sugar Creek Station. Those buildings are currently owned by Charlotte-based Flywheel Group, which will maintain an ownership stake after the sale closes this spring, said Tony Kuhn, president and founder at Flywheel.
Real estate sources say Atlanta-based Third & Urban is the firm under contract. Third & Urban is also doing an $80 million adaptive-reuse deal in west Charlotte. Kuhn declined to name the developer, only saying it is an out-of-market group that does adaptive reuse.
Third & Urban could not be reached for confirmation by deadline Thursday.
The Station House is about 80,000 square feet and the Trailhead building about 110,000 square feet. The adaptive-reuse projects are expected to be the first piece of what'll eventually be a dense, mixed-use town center.
Flywheel, which has been mapping out the Sugar Creek Station project as well as a NoDa Greenway District for years, has fully leased another nearby building, at 4237 Raleigh St. Oso Skate Park, a nonprofit art-house cinema, Charlotte Art League and AerialCLT are expected to occupy the space, making the 36,000-square-foot building something of an arts collective, Kuhn said.
Kuhn said Flywheel has started demolition and preconstruction at 4237 Raleigh. He estimated work at that building to be complete by late summer.
New construction is still on deck for surrounding land but that would follow the initial adaptive-reuse projects at Trailhead and Station House, Kuhn said. A mix of residential and commercial space is anticipated for the new construction.
By late March, Kuhn said Flywheel and Origin Investments will break ground on a 327-unit apartment project as part of the larger Greenway District, running from Matheson Avenue to Craighead Road, south of the Sugar Creek Station projects. Kuhn said that development will likely have an 18- to 24-month construction timeline. Also, Flywheel will build out part of the greenway that will run through the site.
"The unique thing about this partnership and program is that it allows us to create more of a community than a single project," Kuhn said.
Kuhn is also part of a grassroots effort to convert a rail yard between uptown and NoDa into a 220-acre park, tentatively called Queens Park. Currently owned by Norfolk Southern, several neighborhood groups and organizations have come out in support of the plans, which are highly ambitious and would require the railroad operator's cooperation to become reality.
The long-term goal would be to connect the Greenway District through Queens Park, Kuhn said. The northern edge of the proposed park is on Matheson Avenue, which is where the Greenway District begins.
Even without a deal currently, Kuhn said the group is doing everything they can now to advance the Queens Park project and garner support.
"We're making sure we’re putting one foot in front of the other, to start to build the infrastructure for what will eventually be a central park," he said.