••• SPONSORED SECTION •••
BALANCING RAPID GROWTH WITH A DESIRE TO MAINTAIN ITS REPUTATION FOR LIVABILITY.
Charlotte’s strong status as a world-class finance center is now accompanied by clear evidence that it is a vital global business center spanning many sectors. That was among the conclusions of this month’s Business North Carolina roundtable with six prominent Queen City business and civic leaders.
he 14-county Charlotte region accounts for a fifth of gross state output with a population of 2.9 million, a 20% increase since 2010. An unusual amount of that growth is coming from people in the 20-to-34 age bracket, along with sharp increases in the number of foreign-born residents.
Maintaining a strong quality of life and training workers for emerging industries are important challenges facing area leaders. The conversation was moderated by Editor David Mildenberg. The transcript was edited for clarity.
The discussion was sponsored by:
- Accrue Partners
- Central Piedmont Community College
- CoxSchepp Construction
- Regions Bank
WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT BUSINESS-RELATED ISSUES IN CHARLOTTE?
PACK: Employment hits everybody’s radar. The city has done great at diversifying industry since 2009 and 2010 from what was perceived as a predominantly financial services market.
There is now construction, development, manufacturing, distribution and services, which is pretty encompassing.
A lot of people don’t realize all the companies that are still moving to Charlotte and the consolidation of businesses.
WALTON: Interest rates and inflation seem to be cooling. You’ve got political uncertainty, and businesses and people in finance like nice stable trends and predictability. A lot of entrepreneurs are kind of delaying decisions until we get on the other side, maybe in the beginning of next year.
WILSON: I was recently in Germany meeting with several clients who manage family run manufacturing companies looking to build in our region. They know Charlotte and its large German community and a large manufacturing base here. The big concern right now is what happens with the election. The potential for additional punitive tariffs is going to be a pretty significant chilling effect as far as the viability of making good economic sense.
Charlotte is extremely attractive, but they were aware of some of the ills Charlotte is facing, along with most cities. Normally it’s just a pure discussion of accolades. This time, it included some concerns about the health of our uptown. It was surprising because I seldom have to defend our city.
WHAT ARE THE GREATEST ASSETS OF THE REGION?
BEACHAM: Quality of life here is amazing. We have been very resilient. Two years ago, when construction costs were spiking like we’ve never seen, we were able to continue projects moving forward because rents kept going up. We just made the math work in a different way.
One difference in Charlotte has been leaders like Hugh McColl, who transformed the city from when uptown was non-existent after 5 o’clock. I’m curious to see how people step up into that vacuum, because it’s not what it used to be. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that has to happen to keep Charlotte business-friendly.
MICHAEL, TALK TO US ABOUT THE TRANSFORMATION OF CENTER CITY.
SMITH: Downtowns across the world have faced headwinds like we’ve not
known since the 70s. It’s stay-at-home orders, it’s expensive capital, it’s uncertainty on the ability to finance things. It’s issues of public safety.
Those are things that this community
has demonstrated a real commitment
to addressing.
There’s also an interesting change going on. We feel like it’s evolving from a central business district to a central activity district. Tepper Sports and the new owners of Hornet Sports and Entertainment (Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall) are trying to more regularly program their assets. So we’re seeing giant spikes in hospitality.
WHAT ADVANTAGES DOES CHARLOTTE HAVE?
WALTON: Accessibility. You’ve got major interstates passing through here, a major airport, top 10 in the world from takeoffs and landings. You can get to the mountains with acres and acres of open space in 90 minutes. For the most part, you can get anywhere you want in two hours.
PACK: People get here and they’re like, ‘Wow, Charlotte, it’s really green and really cool.’ You have young ones that move here and then the next thing you know, their brothers and sisters and mothers and aunts and uncles are all moving here. I don’t think anybody’s left in Buffalo or Rochester.
WILSON: We’re a curious city.
We have no massive mountain range, there’s no huge body of water. I’m always impressed by the Germans who come from the Black Forest, or these lovely places. I ask, `Once you get the business established, will you go back to Germany?’ No, they’re so entrenched with the quality of life here, for all kinds of variable reasons. I think Charlotte has a tremendous pride of place. It’s a city that seems to have, as part of its collective psyche, the idea of constant improvement.
ARE WE INVESTING ENOUGH IN EDUCATION?
DEITEMEYER: Central Piedmont is in an urban core. Mecklenburg County has been very generous to the college. We have six amazing campuses with unmatched facilities that are university-esque.
With a headcount of 48,000-plus, we are tracking back toward our highest enrollment pre-pandemic. We have the capacity to continue to meet the needs of our community in terms of workforce development with 300-plus programs. Whatever you can dream or imagine that you want a place in this beautiful, vibrant city and county, the college can get you there. We also have fantastic transfer partners, including our largest with
UNC Charlotte.
We do great things in higher education at Central Piedmont because we’re embraced. We are in the conversations about what needs to happen in business and the workforce.
SMITH: The way that North Carolina stands out No. 1 or No. 2 in business, the foundation of that is our education assets. We continue to be a place that has 113 people a day moving here. In-migration is the lifeblood of that. About 60% of UNC Charlotte graduates stay in market. It is now at about 30,000 students. We believe that UNC Charlotte is a foundational part of our economic development strategy for what’s next for our region.
IS THE MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING MARKET STILL STRONG?
BEACHAM: On paper, we have the best backlog we’ve ever had. But about this time last year, when the sort of convergence of construction costs staying high and getting higher, and then interest rates just crushing your clients ability to pencil out a deal, we had to cut a lot out, in pretty short order.
Until we start seeing actual rate cuts, a lot of these players are going to stay on the sidelines. We’re hopeful that a lot of those deals come back alive toward the end of the year.
WILSON: What I think is a fascinating megatrend that many cities are dealing with. We have these lovely new apartment neighborhoods close to our uptown, and in a couple of years you will begin to see school buses out in front of them. Apartments here seem to be designed for the 21-to-31 age demographic. At some point many move on to home ownership, but we just don’t have a great deal of product. For all kinds of reasons, we are not seeing a transition. Charlotte is going to face an inflection point. We’ll continue to attract young people, but they may struggle building personal equity as they wish to start families and age.
SMITH: It will be interesting to see how we do this without building concentric circles further and further out, and how we pair it with the transportation system that allows for better density, maybe some more affordability. One thing we cannot ever, ever let happen again in American consciousness is to allow our city centers to hollow out. That is a devastation, that is a cancer that will spread through and finally get to the suburbs.
One of the great qualities of Charlotte is that it’s got a really impressive downtown.
ARE HOUSING ISSUES AN IMPEDIMENT TO ATTRACTING TALENT?
PACK: For people relocating, selling their home and then getting to Charlotte and finding a house at the same time, can be a challenge. In the last two years, working several C-level searches, the biggest problem is going to be who can move and find something. And if they’re moving a family, do they have the flexibility to move into an apartment on an interim basis? Many times, that’s not appealing.
DO YOU THINK WE ARE INVESTING IN MOBILITY AND TRANSPORTATION to BETTER GET AROUND?
SMITH: We don’t have an option. If we want to be the city that we have been, and hold on to the quality of life that’s drawn people here, that then brings jobs here, we’ve got to make investments in infrastructure. We’re on a heckuva growth curve and that growth curve has to be complemented with those kinds of investments.
When we invested in the Blue Line in the early aughts, it was a bold move. I personally provided 30 tours to major cities throughout North America that wanted to understand what our vision was.
It’s a shame that it’s now been a couple decades, but I’m thrilled at who we’ve got at the table, the kind of vision that’s being shared and the kind of conversations that we’re having.
WALTON: When I first moved to Charlotte, you effectively felt like you had University, Lake Norman, Center City, South Park and then Ballantyne. Now you’ve got a lot of labels on neighborhoods in-between that are going vertical. So Charlotte for years grew out, and now it’s growing up to some degree.
A lot of companies, ours included, are encouraging people to get back in the office. We’re in Center City and
glad to be there.
GASTON COUNTY HAS BECOME A HOT MARKET WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT REGIONALISM?
BEACHAM: We just finished an adaptive reuse of a mill in Belmont that leased up quicker than any project
we’ve ever had. Yet the town of Belmont is using that as a reason to slow things down. I can only imagine what if it had been a bad project.
We see that in every bedroom community. It’s Matthews; it’s Fort Mill. You can’t argue with the folks that live there because many of them have lived there their whole lives and don’t want to see a change.
Still, Charlotte is the engine that makes them thrive. Ease of transportation might exacerbate their problems, so I think that’s why you’re seeing some tension with
some of these bedroom communities about future rail lines. They don’t want to lose what they’ve got.
IS CHARLOTTE MORE INTERESTING THAN IT WAS 10 or 20 YEARS AGO?
SMITH: Absolutely. The ultimate test is whether our children want to return here? And we’re winning that game. Even the ones that want to go out, they want a boomerang back. It’s about being able to access the world but still have a place that is truly North Carolina.
WILSON: Another interesting thing is that the city is becoming a more august and sincere city. It’s becoming an older city. People get in their 60s and they say well, I guess it’s time for me to self-segregate, and go to Sun City or Sea Pines or something. At 59, I don’t really have this desire to self-segregate from an urban environment that I find appealing.
IS THERE A Sense THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORK AT BANK OF AMERICA OR OTHER GIANTS TO
GET AHEAD?
WALTON: There’s more than 100,000 employees in the financial services industry in Charlotte. You don’t necessarily have to live in your headquarters’ city to have a meaningful job. Regions is the largest [super-regional] bank headquartered in the Southeast, based in Birmingham. There are a lot of senior leaders that live in Charlotte, and they hop on that airplane every Monday and come back on Thursday.
We have more than 400 employees who work in Charlotte. Most larger financial institutions have major operations in Charlotte because it is such a talent pool.
PACK: People don’t realize until they get here all the other industries that are here. We have a lot of great companies in the middle market that aren’t name brand companies. They’re headquartered here. They’re global in nature. They create lots of jobs and lots of opportunities. I would say that’s a large piece of my customer base. We serviced 187 clients last year. Not Lowe’s and not Bank of America.
It’s been that mid-market customer that has really built the foundation of Charlotte and created a lot of great opportunities.
WALTON: Another important asset is the hospitals we have here. We forget how valuable of a resource that is to have in our backyard.
SMITH: And they keep getting stronger. This conversation about the diversification of our local economy is so key to where we’re going next. Financial services is an amazing base, but through our education system, through the kind of talent that’s coming here, and then also these new innovation hubs that are being created like The Pearl (which includes Wake Forest University School of Medicine). We are just starting to understand the amount of institutional capital and national labs money that’s possible.
WILSON: One sword of Damocles over our cities and a point of concern is the environment. For a week, Raleigh reached a heat index of around 115 degrees. This is going to fundamentally impact every aspect of our lives. We cannot change the world, but we need to seriously begin to implement what changes we can make to have a more sustainable and habitable city center, such as creating green canopies for our streets and walkways. ■