JHart

May 3

8 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

First phase of the expansion of the Cabarrus sewer treatment plant comes online this year.

Rocky River Facility Expansion — WSACC

the county is not courting water-intensive industries but there is the capacity for new industry and the county's view is that they dont want a lot warehouse distribution projects taking up a lot sewer capacity as they do not create as many jobs. Source Cabarrus EDC meetings I have attended and discussions with the county manager staff.

New residential development has slowed but you would not know it from driving around Cabarrus County especially in Harrisburg and Concord.

https://www.kannapolisnc.gov/Portals/0/Departments/Planning/Documents/Wastewater Allocation Policy Exhibit A City Council Adopted February 28%2C 2022.pdf

It's already allocated....

May 3

11 hours ago, KJHburg said:

they are being remedied now and for industrial job creating projects they will allocate sewer for in the county. It is just massive amounts of new houses that has been slowed but not stopped. The expansion of the sewer treatment plant should be done in a year. However the city of Concord and Kannapolis have sewer capacity for new industry. Warehouse development in Rowan has taken off due to cheaper and more available land than along I-85 in Cabarrus.

Phase 3 might be done within a year but the next phase is 2027+ and that is already allocated to active projects, further development is going to need to wait for additional expansion that is just now beginning master planning so you're looking into 2030 and beyond. Kannapolis might have openings in the business parks it set aside for sewer but not new industrial sites. They publish all of this information including a waiting list of projects that do not have sewer capacity so I'm not sure where you are getting information that they are ready for new industry...

April 19

10 hours ago, Vitamin_N said:

If anybody wants to get into the weeds on some of the economic dynamics of EVs, here's an interview with Adam Rozencwajg of Goehring & Rozencwajg, a natural resources investment firm.

I really heard nothing but taking anecdotes and applying it at scale in a way to cast doubt about the positive impacts of EVs. Obviously if you assume purchasing an EV is an added car and not replacing another ICE you were going to purchase instead, assuming batteries are produced in China, assuming the mining practices previously used for lithium and other rare-earth metals aren't going to improve over time like every other part of the supply chain; then you can extrapolate it out to show a worse impact.

Cradle to grave studies of EV/ICE show the added emissions bump from manufacturing batteries is offset by reduced driving emissions (even if you recharged an EV with electricity produced by 100% coal fired plants which is very rare even in rural areas) around 30,000 miles of driving. Are EVs the savior of the planet ? No, definitely not. Are they better than ICE? Absolutely. They are an easier scapegoat than our horrendous agricultural and development practices. And that is just on an emissions basis, the intangible health benefits are almost never talked about.

April 17

They don't actually want retail there, they were just forced to include street level retail space in order to build a massive standalone parking deck..

April 2

On 4/1/2024 at 11:56 AM, kermit said:

Annual reminder that NCDOT only covers 65% of its road construction and maintenance costs via gas taxes and other user fees. While we do better than most (VA!), this is still a massive subsidy being taken from people who may be working to reduce the amount they drive. Ending this subsidy for drivers (it would not be a tax, its just cost recovery) is the first place to start trying to reduce auto dependence and meeting Federal climate goals (50% reduction in GHG by 2030 -- this is less than 6 years from now). It looks like we can't afford new roads for both fiscal and financial reasons.

Gas taxes are also roughly 80/20 gas/diesel and almost all usage fees are paid by personal vehicles (commercial vehicles typically register out of state) even though almost all highway wear is due to commercial vehicles.

March 27

22 hours ago, Nathan2 said:

Is Charlotte ever going to redesign its streets so they are safer for all users? Some of the most walkable areas in Charlotte are overrun with cars and wide roads, the only thing that will make these places better is redesigned streets. It's absolutely frustrating that the City continues to do almost nothing on this front. They continue operating on the idea that pedestrians should just wear hi-viz and watch out for cars. God for bid drivers have to tale an extra 20 secs to travel somewhere.

I think the north side is getting a little attention at least. The Plaza and Parkwood road diets have made a very noticeable difference in speed and I would even say improved traffic flow. If they just poured concrete bike lanes instead of planters and plastic barriers it would have been a home run. Matheson is next, still like 2 years, but it is going to be such an incredible difference. The N. Davidson and Jordan Place intersection should be the model for all intersections in the city and not just because of a XCLT trail running through. They extended the concrete pedestrian islands deep into the intersection to force drivers to slow and make sweeping turns and also to shorten the walking/biking distance to cross and it makes this intersection such a massive improvement.

March 7

2 hours ago, kermit said:

I don't have a problem uptown redevelopment subsidies during a time where the biggest single property tax generator neighborhood is struggling, but I do agree that any subsidies should be as efficient (yield the greatest transformative change for the least money) as possible.

I personally think that if we've overbuilt Uptown office buildings to the point that valuations and loans against these properties are so far off from reality that all of these buildings are no longer viable as office space at any price point, then there is no way the city government has enough money to fix the actual problem. I would probably have less objections for incentives to just build cheap housing on vacant lots in Uptown.

March 7

2 minutes ago, kermit said:

Yea that is fair. When conversion just don't pencil, it sounds like any potential public subsidy might be spend on demo in order to speed residential redevelopment.

Not to be the 'well actually' guy but there are subsidies for some home renovations (if in a federal historic district and your plans have their approval)

I think it needs to be income producing, we want to incentivize companies from tearing down historic properties, homeowners we just mandate they follow historic restoration guidelines through zoning There is additional value in historic facades, that's why if you look at a list of large office/residential conversion projects they are all in NY/DC/SF where land and construction costs are so high or they have a historic facade that provides additional value besides just square footage being used as office space.

March 7

10 minutes ago, kermit said:

I dunno, we have a couple of conversions uptown, but (IIRC) they are either from a long time ago or not really comparable (e.g. super luxury the Trust). Have we seen any conversions in the past 5 (10?) years?

No, I would not give Levine a dime, but we already kida did IIRC (I think the city paid for infrastructure and park / UNCC paid for parking spaces which were never delivered).

$250 million? I thought the Duke building subsidy was $20 million. Assuming the subsidy is geared towards getting the conversion done quickly then it does not seem totally out of line to me.

They paid $35M for the building and they estimated the renovation at ~$210M from that article. My point is if the goal is to get residents in Uptown, they could take the same $250M and build more apartments for cheaper on a vacant lot. All residential conversions are super luxury because that is the only way to get the numbers to work, it is so much more expensive than building from scratch even under the most ideal conditions. It's just another grift like Levine.

Why can't I get 50% of my higher tax revenues back if I renovate my house? If it improves the tax base the city still comes out ahead! (Not trying to be snarky, I just thought it would help illustrate the idea).

March 7

18 minutes ago, kermit said:

Meh, my impression of uptown is that it is hurting. The city certainly can’t afford for it to decay, and changes in uptown land use seem vital to future health of the entire metro. I am fine for some taxpayer subsidies for a proof of concept (office to residential conversion) and kick-starting some post-pandemic residential development uptown. I view this as a way to avoid the ‘Levineisation’ of the 3rd Ward. How much money has his inaction cost us over the years in 1st Ward? I am sure its way over $20 million.

Far better ROI on this than any sport of ‘roads first transit plan’, and certainly far better ROI than any stadium investment (yes, hotel tax funds, walled off, yada yada).

It's not a proof of concept of anything. The concept of developing (even converting) a residential building is already very established, it isn't happening in this case because it doesn't make financial sense to do so. Do you think the city should be paying Daniel Levine to start building on his land because he has sat on it for so long? If your answer is no, then it isn't any better to pick a different developer for public investment. MRP could take their same $250M and build a residential tower on any of our vacant lots across the city.

March 7

LMAO! I'm sure everyone loves the idea of our private monopolized utility selling a building at a discount well below market value and then using public funding (the source of which isn't even clear because tax incentive grants use tax increases not decreases) to help an out of state developer convert what is arguably the most desired development location in the city into apartments at a time with decreasing rents after the largest apartment boom this city has ever seen. It's really nice because we get to funnel money from the Charlotte taxpayers out to private investors in multiple different ways throughout the entire process!

February 24

Good ole Union County. Fighting 100 years of medical research and harming its residents in the name of personal freedom. It's a good thing they aren't self-sufficient and rely on other counties for most of their water or else this would cause more harm.

https://www.wbtv.com/2024/02/19/union-county-leaders-vote-removing-fluoride-water-supply/

February 13

Here is a quote from the president of the Dilworth Community Association about the UDO, “I can say in the Dilworth historic district, I haven’t heard much fear over the elimination of single-family-only zoning. We have multiplexes on almost every corner.”

January 12

Downtown San Francisco is not 50% parking lots and construction costs are multiple times that of Charlotte, they just are not comparable. The numbers can work in NYC, SF, and DC because of how expensive new construction is or if a building has additional value like a historic façade. If you look at Dallas, there have been a few conversions of several floors of 40 story office towers, but they have always sat on top of newly renovated office space and lease at a premium compared to other apartments. There was still a developer renovating new class A commercial space and bringing in new tenants.

12 hours ago, KJHburg said:

There is just now way too much office space in the country's biggest cities and short of tearing them down something has to be done and residential or partial conversion is a solution.

We can be a growing city with vacant office towers yes it happens see the above cities and we have to figure out out to reuse these vacant office towers. I applaud Charlotte for thinking about this already because the office market may not improve for years even in a growing market like Charlotte. By converting to residential it will stabilizes the values of buildings from falling in the abyss.

Who is we? If developers can make the numbers work then by all means have at it, I keep having to repeat myself because of the calls for public investment. If the major concern is tax basis then there are plenty of other more equitable options for adjusting our tax codes that don't shift the burden from out of state speculative investors to Charlotte citizens.

January 11

17 hours ago, KJHburg said:

towers are emptying out and their values fall in value making conversions to residential feasible.

How these office buildings are valued makes no difference in the conversion costs. It may make a difference to a potential investor, but when the conversion costs are already higher than it costs to build a new apartment building then there is no possible way to make the math work. $440/sqft plus the common area renovation costs plus whatever imaginary number you want to put on the existing building and land value.. Every single one of these proposals included recommendations for public grants in order to even make the concept appear real on paper.

17 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Otherwise we will have a booming city with 32 and 42 story empty office buildings worth nothing. Why it matters to all? Your property taxes will go up as these towers values go down. The commercial tax base is very important. (Because do you see the city reducing their budget as office building values fall something needs to increase to make their budgets)

Do you not see how contradictory all of this nonsense is? If we have vacant office towers all over Uptown sitting worthless, then we are not a booming city.. Why would there be increased demand for people to live in high rise residential units if there is so much pull back in commercial activity in Uptown? How exactly would converting these properties make their tax values go up when residential lease rates are nowhere close to commercial?

January 4

19 hours ago, NYtoCLT said:

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).

Not saying anything is happening but they did hang new "Coming Soon" banners over the fencing that had the old delivery date on it

December 21, 2023

4 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

Here is what some other cities are doing in terms of office conversions and how the local governments are helping out.

How Incentives Boost Office Conversions - Commercial Property Executive (commercialsearch.com)

Obviously it is not easy as people think to convert office space to housing as only certain buildings would work. Tax incentives might have to be used. Because think of this way a fully leased office building is worth a lot more than a mostly vacant one. We now have a vacant 32 story office building uptown the former 2 Wells Fargo and some other buildings with extremely high vacancies. The values of these building will decrease which decrease property tax revenue in the future. They need to be dealt with in some form or fashion.

We are still building new commercial office space here in Charlotte, there is zero need for any incentives to be provided for poorly maintained commercial offices. That office didn't suddenly become unleaseable and lose 50% of its value overnight.. Those cities in the article do not have acres of vacant land ready for construction and have development costs that far exceed Charlotte's which make the math more compelling. How would the city paying incentives to convert an office building to residential make the tax revenues go up? People aren't paying $40/sqft for residential leases...

November 14, 2023

On 11/10/2023 at 2:52 AM, Windsurfer said:

Really? Why? Seems like a brilliant idea to me.

You think it's a brilliant idea to try and use vacant office space as a new CMS medical and technology high school? There's so many reasons this is such a bad idea I'm not even sure how to begin listing them but right off the bat: the HVAC systems cannot handle the ventilation requirements for labs/medical equipment, the electrical infrastructure couldn't support the technology part of this magnet program, no outdoor areas or athletic facilities, no food preparation facilities, there's a tenant on the first floor and no dedicated lobby/elevator for security, and to top it all off this is still a privately owned building in the middle of bankruptcy litigation and we just passed bond funding to support construction of a purpose built magnet school so I'm not exactly sure why we don't think that will be enough money to build a new facility in the first place..

There is a lot more to a building besides the walls and a renovation to that extent would be much more expensive than building from scratch. I'm really not sure why people think these old office spaces can be repurposed into anything else in their current states.

November 9, 2023

20 hours ago, KJHburg said:

this should go into the Wake Forest Center at 200 N College which is 90% vacant and now the building is going back to the lender in this case Wells. We need to reimagine schools with construction costs increasing and increasing.

One of the wildest takes I think I've ever seen on this website..

September 13, 2023

35 minutes ago, atlrvr said:

8% is still very low long term target return for real estate private equity funds, especially in the current environment, which would suggests the ultimate investors (the equity in that fund) is ok for low-risk/low-return strategy, especially if there is a "social good" component to it. Ascent making their money on the capital management fee and then asset management fee I'm sure.

That was just the number thrown out in a fluff piece so we don't know if that's real but still, 8% consistently paid out quarterly just from the immediate cash flow of these properties is certainly not very low and they are also entitled to 40% of sales proceeds after the 20 year land restriction expires on an already underutilized plot of land in a growing city. Atrium, Truist, Honeywell, Lowes, PNC, etc. are more than happy to sign up for that, they had to turn people down after the last fundraising session and it's not because everyone is feeling altruistic towards housing all of a sudden.

September 13, 2023

17 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Ascent, a sister company of Ascent Real Estate Capital, closed Sept. 8 on the $37 million purchase of Charlotte Woods at 1116 Scaleybark Road. The firm's Housing Impact Fund covered $12.85 million of the total investment. The remainder of financing came from the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County as well as a senior mortgage from Freddie Mac.

this is win for affordable housing in this city and great private public partnership that made it happen.

As long as credit is rightfully given, the preservation and rent reduction is entirely funded by the City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. The "Housing Impact Fund" is a private equity fund that is still expecting to generate consistent 8% returns, even after renovations and "rent reductions" (subsidized). One of its founders, Erskine Bowles insists this is not philanthropy. “We are capitalists,” he says. “We believe in capitalism."

Is this a better use of city's affordable housing bond than subsidizing apartments 15 at a time in new developments? Probably. But it still highlights how much money is being siphoned off of low-income renters and public funds and how much money it would take in public funding to solve the current affordability issues this way.

August 24, 2023

17 hours ago, InSouthPark said:

Meck County tax rate for 2023 (due next week) which includes my new tax value is .4731

CLT City tax rate for 2023 is .2604

So combined Charlotte is $.7335 vs $.6321 unincorporated Union County. So yeah, unincorporated Union county pays a little less, considering the infrastructure the county needs, I doubt it stays below Meck for long. A 500k house in unincorporated Union county pays about $500/yr less property tax than Charlotte proper. That's kinda wild to me.

And that's unincorporated Union vs inside the city! That's what was so surprising to me, not trying to start a Union vs Meck debate but I've never looked at other county tax rates but I just assumed based on local rhetoric about Charlotte taxes that surrounding counties were drastically lower. If you went to Waxhaw and asked 100 people if someone in SouthPark or Waxhaw paid more in taxes I bet you would get 100 votes for SouthPark.

August 23, 2023

12 hours ago, KJHburg said:

My tax payment is exactly the same as last year to the penny in Union County. They did a reassessment about 3 years ago so not this year like Mecklenburg did which resulted in higher tax values for just about every residential property.

If your property value went up more than 34% since the last reassessment then yes, you'll see the exact same thing with Union County..

My point is can you imagine paying more taxes than living in the city of Charlotte and being told no when you want to hook up to the water/sewer because your well is full of arsenic or your septic is failing?

August 22, 2023

4 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Union County tax bills are out and I got mine. I must say I not seen a county or city around here tell you exactly how much of your taxes go to what like this.

Of my county .6321 per $100 value rate

Wow! So high and they still don't know where to put their poop?!

That means if you live in Wingate, Marshville, Waxhaw, Indian Trail, Stallings, or Lake Park you are paying higher taxes than if you live in the City of Charlotte.

Mecklenburg haven't updated their brochure for 2024 rates yet but they publish an annual breakdown that shows where taxes are being spent: https://tax.mecknc.gov/tax-rates

August 18, 2023

16 hours ago, KJHburg said:

He noted that cities like Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas; and Chicago have been successfully converting office for some time thanks to incentives from their local governments.""

12 hours ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

Though I’m all for the private sector using private dollars on these conversions in Charlotte. Otherwise, throw $$$ in other neighborhoods and if you’re going to in uptown… there’s plenty of space to build way more housing at a fraction of the cost…

The reason you're seeing so many articles and people posting about it is to slowly work the idea that this would benefit the city to get local funds to bailout commercial space in Uptown. So many of these office spaces have neglected maintenance projects that they can no longer renovate floor plans without addressing the core building systems at a much higher cost. You can only put lipstick on a pig so many times and in the current environment you can no longer offload these buildings so they are looking for public assistance.

You're spot on there is so much available land to build residential development in every part of this city.

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