Uptown Charlotte construction is roaring back. Can demand keep up?

Some 28 cranes towered over construction sites around uptown Charlotte in 2008, but they became a rare sight as the recession ground development to a halt.

Today, the cranes are rising again in the citys center.

A dozen or more projects are under construction or newly completed inside the Interstate 277 loop, as well as just outside it along Morehead Street and parts of Kings Drive.

Look toward the north end of uptown and youll see the nearly complete SkyHouse Uptown apartments rising 24 stories above North Tryon. Over by NASCAR Plaza, dirt is moving for a 10-story Embassy Suites hotel.

And bigger projects are in the works: Three real estate groups are angling to start construction next year on uptown office towers, vying to throw the first new one skyward since the recession.

But its the flurry of apartment construction that draws the most notice and questions of whether its too much for the citys population to sustain.

Real estate developers behind the construction wave say it isnt. Theyre placing increasingly large bets on the rebounding local job market and on demographic trends that are seeing more and more young urban professionals move to Charlotte.

Uptown Charlotte is one of the most desirable places to live in the Southeast, if not the country, said real estate developer Clay Grubb, part of the group behind the SkyHouse tower. The real question should be, why has it taken this long for construction to boom.

A growing number of real estate studies and experts back that up. Charlotte landed at No. 7 out of 75 U.S. real estate markets to watch in 2015, according to a new report from the Urban Land Institute a think tank focused on development and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The only cities faring better: the Texas boomtowns of Houston, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth, along with San Francisco, Denver and Los Angeles.

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Uptown Charlotte construction is roaring back. Can demand keep up?