Developers mix it up for young professionals

Tired of the bitterly cold Michigan winters and in search of better job opportunities, Jeff Sharp moved to Charlotte in late 2007.

With a background in custom homebuilding, Sharp, 26, changed gears shortly after moving to the Queen City and landed a job as a real estate agent with My Townhome Realty.

After renting an apartment for a few years, he bought a 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom condominium in October at The Village of SouthEnd for $160,000.

The Village is a four-story, mixed-use complex situated among office space and retailers, such as a salon, coffee shop, furniture store and restaurant.

Sharp’s condo, which he shares with a roommate, is less than a mile from his office and just a short walk from a stop along the Lynx Blue Line light-rail system, which he regularly takes to get to uptown bars and restaurants.

Charlotte-based Boulevard Centro developed The Village, which opened in 2005 when the real estate market was booming and such urban, infill, mixed-use projects were all the rage.

The market has cooled since then, thanks to the recession. But as the economy continues to improve, and young professionals such as Sharp migrate to Charlotte, some believe those types of mixed-use projects will once again take off.

“I think they’ll lead the recovery,” said David Furman, president of Boulevard Centro. “If you evaluate the demographics of America, there are so many young people out there. And while there’s always going to be people who want to live in the suburbs, there’s an ever-growing percentage of our national population that wants to live in a more urban context, where they can walk to a coffee shop or take the train to work.”

The Y factor

The age group Charlotte developers have in mind when developing their mixed-use projects is Generation Y, 18- to 35-year-olds.

It’s a demographic that doesn’t want to deal with long commutes to work and likes the concept of living somewhere within walking distance of restaurants, bars and other businesses, said David Walters, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and coordinator of the university’s Master of Urban Design Program.

Condos to live, work in

The developers behind Galleries at NoDa hope that’s the case.

With construction scheduled to start next month, the project is slated to be a three-story, mixed-used complex with 22 live/work units just north of uptown in NoDa.

Charlotte developers Robert Nixon and Greg Godley, along with two other partners, are behind the project, said Scott Lindsley, a real estate agent with Charlotte-based My Townhome Realty, who is selling units at the new development.

Lindsley said plans call for the project to feature condos out of which residents can operate a business. The bottom floor of the building will have businesses, including a pharmacy and organic butcher shop.

Lindsley expects Charlotte to continue to see similar mixed-use projects when development picks up, saying such developments have been embraced by buyers in the past. Mixed-use projects are appealing to developers who want for-sale units and commercial space in their developments, he said, adding that the commercial space provides a source of revenue until the residential units are sold.

Wanted: young professionals

Charlotte homebuilder Meeting Street Homes and Communities has been building homes in Charlotte since 1996, with a focus on townhomes, live/work townhomes and detached single-family homes.

Scott Dirkschneider, Charlotte division manager, said 90 percent of what Meeting Street builds targets professionals in their 20s and early 30s.

Up until the Great Recession, Meeting Street was seeing a boom in live/work units in mixed-use developments, such as Cedar Walk in south Charlotte and Eastfield Village in northeast Charlotte, Dirkschneider said.

The three-story live/work townhomes at Cedar Walk and Eastfield Village offer living space on the top two floors and commercial and office space on the first floor, where the townhome owner operates their business.

After a strong start with live/work developments in the early 2000s, new construction has stalled, Dirkschneider said.

“We haven’t built any in two years, which is very frustrating,” he said. “We have people begging to buy them, but financing just isn’t available.”

Monte Ritchey is also watching the real estate market closely and hopes to develop a mixed-use project with a residential component on a 1.25-acre site at the corner of Commonwealth and Pecan avenues in Plaza Midwood that he and some partners own.

But like many other developers, Ritchey said getting financing to start construction remains a challenge.

‘What makes sense now’

Ritchey, president of Charlotte-based Conformity Corp., a real estate development company that specializes in high-density, urban infill projects, completed its most recent development, Southborough, in 2009.

In between SouthEnd and Dilworth, the project includes about 70 townhomes and single-family homes and a four-story, 24,000-square-foot mixed-use building with offices and restaurants.

T.J. Larsen, founder of My Townhome Realty, which is selling units at Southborough, said the development has proved particularly popular among young professionals, thanks to the location and prices for the townhomes and single-family homes, which range from $120,000 to $350,000.

Teresa Kanter moved to Charlotte from Tulsa, Okla., in March and bought a three-bedroom townhouse at Southborough for $271,000.

Kanter, 35, said she loves that she’s just a few miles from uptown, where she works for Wells Fargo as a commodities trader, and that she can walk to neighborhood bars, restaurants and stores.

“I really get a lot of bang for my buck here,” she said. “I love this area and the fact that my townhome is so low-maintenance. It really is ideal.”

Sam Boykin can be reached at [email protected].