After years of no new towers, uptown has dueling skyscraper projects

For years during and after the recession, nobody wanted to talk about building another office tower in uptown Charlotte.

Too risky, the developers said. Recession-scarred banks were barely lending money to build houses, much less to construct multi-million dollar skyscrapers.

But today, multiple tower projects are battling for tenants. Spectrum Properties and Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers are perhaps the furthest along in the development pipeline. Theyre slated to break ground in January for their 25-story office tower at 300 S. Tryon St., beside Latta Arcade.

Real estate insiders took particular note of the project because it already has an anchor tenant, Babson Capital Management, to occupy the biggest chunk of the building.

Now, developers of two other uptown office tower projects say theyre going to break ground next year too even though neither project has the financial security of having an anchor tenant in hand.

Crescent Communities says its 27-story Tryon Place mixed-use project will go forward at South Tryon and Stonewall streets next summer. And Portman Holdings, which owns the Westin Hotel at College and Stonewall streets, says ground will be broken in June for its 19-story office tower atop the Westins parking deck.

(Trinity Capital Advisors, developers of 1000 S. Tryon, a 14-story office tower planned just outside of the Interstate 277 loop at Morehead and Tryon streets, have said they will wait for an anchor tenant before starting construction).

I got a chance to sit down recently with Atlanta-based Portmans CEO, Ambrish Baisiwala. He said his firm is absolutely going forward in June, with or without an anchor. He chuckled in acknowledging that, at the moment, theres lots of aggressive marketing percolating as the rival projects compete for corporate tenants.

Im quite comfortable with it, said Baisiwala, whose two decades in real estate includes work in the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and Australia.

Talking to him and to Portmans leasing director, Travis Garland, I got a sense of what the sales pitch sounds like. They touted their buildings two-story outdoor balconies, direct access to the Lynx light rail trains and proximity to the meeting spaces and restaurants of the Westin. They noted the high visibility their tower can have from I-277, and said the building could be finished in the fourth quarter of 2016 faster than the other two proposed towers within the 277 loop.

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After years of no new towers, uptown has dueling skyscraper projects