NYtoCLT

https://www.multihousingnews.com/alliance-residential-carlyle-open-luxury-charlotte-community/ Some interesting info/data/anecdotes here. Charlotte barely cracked the top 20 for 2024 Office to Apartment Pipeline.

I just got back from CREFC (the largest commercial real estate finance conference of the year) and there was a panel on conversions of distressed office to multi-family that was pretty interesting. There wasn't an existing thread so I thought I would create one, since there will likely be specific developments as well as policy changes in CLT dealing with this in the coming years. I went without much prior thought on conversions though had previously heard from some people that conversions can cost more than just tearing down and re-building from scratch. That said, I walked away pretty bullish on conversions. Some of the main take-aways. 1. Right now supply of multi-family is ~2% conversions but is projected to be ~10% in the coming years. Right now Office to Resi only accounts for ~1/3 of conversions (fair bit of industrial to resi -- i.e. mill apartments, and hotel to resi). 2. The cost and time to assess whether an office building is a good candidate to convert has decreased dramatically. It used to take 6 months and $200,000 just to figure out that conversion didn't pencil. Now it takes a couple of days and is a de minimis cost. The major architecture firms have software that evaluates the floor plans and spits out a calculation of the likelihood of success of the conversion project. 3. For people in development, some of the biggest concerns are delays and cost overruns. The trades most likely to cause delays and cost overruns line up pretty much exactly with the trades that are not needed for a conversion (foundation, etc). This takes away a fair bit of the construction risk and makes timelines easier to hit. 3. Most people know that as a positive, converting an empty office to apartments would revitalize the area (more people to shop at the retail nearby, etc). And for people concerned about housing supply and the cost of housing, this would obviously help that as well. What I didn't fully appreciate and I don't think is talked about much is the level of environmental impact. Concrete is one of the most carbon intensive processes out there and by not having to pour new concrete and being able to re-use existing metal, a conversion is more green than building a new building even if no other environmental considerations are taken into account and the equivalent new construction is LEED Platinum (or whatever). 4. The Biden Admin is working with some of the agencies to make a pool of cheap money available for these conversions, but processes are still unclear and the money is not yet easily accessible. 5. Most municipalities are having discussions about tax incentives, but the level to which incentives will be used will be hyper local. Hopefully CLT takes some lead on this since we definitely have a fair bit of Class B office in uptown that could cause problems.

Would have been a great addition of missing middle directly on a (semi) protected bike lane. Contrast that with abandoned structure currently being used as a homeless encampment and it's a pretty hard 180.

Based on the lack of progress over the past 6-9 months and the homeless people camped out, this project looks dead (or at least stalled). Sad considering how far construction got before it died. Maybe with interest rates decreasing the project will be able to pencil again (and hopefully sitting idle for 6 months will not have done irreparable damage).

They're pretty far along at this point.

I really hope this comes to fruition. With some of the other developments around this area like The Joinery there is a real pedestrian prioritized focus. That plus the density that is going up all down the light rail from Optimist Park through Noda, this stretch has so much potential.

Has CMS made any statements about when they expect to break ground on any of these projects? Is this the kind of thing where nothing will happens for years or do people expect movement pretty quickly?

I think Parkwood/Plaza/Mattheson is Villa Heights. Surprised to see this branded as Optimist Park since I don't think there is any more cache in that then Villa Heights tbh. I'm surprised they didn't try to sell it as NODA like everyone else who is even somewhat near NODA.

Has anyone heard any updates about the Hotel planned on Central and Hawthorne? I feel like this would be huge for the neighborhood.

Any idea if they are planning for ground floor retail? Any sense of # of units?

Too bad they pulled out. A hotel would honestly be pretty great there. Neighbors are going to complain no matter what in Elizabeth but it's probably the (realistic) use that would upset the fewest people. God knows apartments would cause an uproar (and no one is building office).

Yea, I thought about this too. TBD with all the construction. Maybe after all the road work finishes this stretch will be more welcoming (and maybe breathe some semblance of life into Marshall Park (while it is still there).

No real accessibility between this part of Moorehead and Second Ward. South Blvd. is a pedestrian dead zone even if you could get to it so it really only opens up at Tryon. It will be interesting to see how Moorehead looks when all is said and done though -- going to be pretty stark contrast to most of Dilworth right behind it.

I picked up pizza from Figo36 and stopped to gawk. This is a really cool corporate event space.

As far as HOAs, I actually could see this discussion broadened to encompass HOAs in ~10-15 years, but the most close in neighborhoods generally do not have HOAs and those are the areas where the push for way more dense, walkable housing is being pushed for most aggressively. It would not surprise me if eventually people want to put a couple of townhomes in a random suburban HOA though if prices continue to rise. As far as restricting supply, the Dilworth historic district basically took effect because people were mad about ugly townhomes in their neighborhood and it has done a pretty good job of preventing more of the same or similar. If you were going to try to turn 2 home lots into 5 townhomes (or whatever), historic district designation makes it so you will almost certainly look elsewhere because your money has to sit patiently while it could be getting returns elsewhere. Historic districts cut against the (I think laudable) goals of the UDO.