Spectrum adding office in SouthPark

CHARLOTTE – The SouthPark office market, like the entire Charlotte office market, didn’t see any new office space open in 2013.

But the problem goes back even farther in SouthPark. According to the fourth quarter 2013 Karnes Co. report, the SouthPark market hasn’t had any new office space finished since before 2009.

Spectrum Investment Services, a sister company of locally based developer Spectrum Properties, is looking to take advantage of the lack of brand new office space in the market. The company last week announced plans for a 190,000-square-foot office building on a 1.5-acre site on Morrison Boulevard, beside SouthPark Mall.

Spectrum will work on the building in a joint venture with Charlotte-based Tribek Properties. The building is proposed to have about 9,000 square feet of retail on the ground level in addition to seven stories of office space, according to David Jewell, spokesman for Spectrum on this project.

Jewell said the companies have filed a rezoning petition for the land on which the project will be built, at Morrison and South Park Drive. The city has yet to post the rezoning petition on its website, so the specifics of the rezoning are unclear at this point.

Before starting construction on the office building, the Charlotte City Council will have to approve a rezoning, Jewell said, and the company has said it needs to determine how much space to prelease before it breaks ground.

Elsewhere in SouthPark, Pappas Properties is finishing an 86,754-square-foot building near Fairview and Sharon roads, and Lincoln Harris is planning the development of two office buildings on Carnegie Boulevard totaling about 480,000 square feet, according to the Karnes report.

At the end of 2013, SouthPark had almost 4.3 million square feet of office space across 45 buildings, the Karnes report shows. The 756,754 square feet of office space either under construction or proposed for SouthPark would increase office space in the market by 17.8 percent.

SouthPark has the third lowest vacancy rate of all submarkets in Charlotte – behind Cotswold and Midtown – indicating that SouthPark would be better able to absorb such space than a market such as Park Road, which has a 33.1 percent vacancy rate.

Among submarkets with more than 1 million square feet of office space, SouthPark’s 10.3 percent vacancy rate is lower than all but the Midtown submarket, which is 8.8 percent vacant, according to Karnes. Average rents in the SouthPark office market are $24.22 per square foot.

Project description: Spectrum Investment Services is working with Tribek Properties to develop an office building in the SouthPark market.

Where: At Morrison Boulevard and South Park Drive

Size: 190,000 square feet and seven stories

Construction start: To be determined by the developer

SouthPark vacancy: 10.3 percent

SouthPark rent: $24.22 per square foot

SouthPark office inventory: Almost 4.3 million square feet