New school design sets 615 S. College apart

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Sitting in the shadow of the Westin in Uptown, newly-opened office building 615 S. College stands out in a CBD that’s bursting with construction.

A crowd of about 100 gathered at the commercial property on Tuesday for the August luncheon of the Charlotte chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women and to get a behind the scenes tour of the latest project managed by Trinity Partners.

The 378,000-square-foot building stands out from many structures in Uptown with its corkscrew balcony overlooks. Every few floors the building features a cutaway area on the outside to allow visitors to walk out onto an overlook and take in a scenic view of either the Bank of America stadium, The Westin or peer over into trendy Southend with a sightline down along the light rail tracks.

“This insiders tour of 615 S. College is one of the reasons I love being in CREW,” said Jessica Rossi, CREW president. “This building just had their first tenant move in last week and it is great opportunity to see this facility.”

Of the 378,943 square feet for leasing in the building, 212,526 are still available. Major draws for the building, highlighted by the leasing team at Trinity, are that it is at the first downtown stop of the LYNX Blue Line, includes two-story corner balconies, floor-to-ceiling windows and a state-of-the-art fitness center for tenants that includes locker rooms.

“I have the privilege of getting to lease this fantastic property for Portman Holdings,” said John Ball, senior leasing agent with Trinity during his remarks at the CREW meeting. “This lunch today speaks a lot to the vision our partner had 15 years ago. Like a lot of successful developers they thought ahead and didn’t want to do just one project on this property. This building sits on a foundation done in 2003.”

Much of the space already leased is on the lower floors of the building. Ball emphasized this point and the building’s proximity to the Whole Foods store scheduled to open in Uptown later this year.

“We are 45 percent leased and we are fortunate that many of our top floors are still available,” Ball said. “The balconies on this building corkscrew around so some lucky tenant will get access to the observation balcony you saw today. Our tenants are not existing CBD companies so we are helping with that growth.”