Opening Knights

Listen to this article

CHARLOTTE – The view last Friday from Brevard Court in Uptown would have been bizarre three years ago.

Back then, the blocks surrounded by Church and Graham streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard were mostly just surface parking lots.

But on April 11, those blocks played host to thousands of people, a band, food trucks, clowns on stilts, children playing, ticket scalpers and a professional baseball game.

The wall-to-wall crowd at the bars and restaurants of Brevard Court – an alley just off Mint Street – was witnessing the buildup to the first game at BB&T Ballpark, the sparkling new home of the Charlotte Knights minor league baseball team.

But the droves of revelers and baseball fans aren’t the only newcomers to those Uptown blocks and, in fact, many of them stood in the shadows of the new development that is transforming the area into a true center of activity in Uptown.

Dennis Marsoun, a broker at Church Street Realty, said that as a huge baseball fan, he’s delighted that professional baseball has returned to Uptown for the first time in more than 20 years.

But beyond that, with his business office being in Brevard Court, he has seen firsthand the impact bringing a new baseball stadium and an urban park has had on what used to be a quiet part of Uptown.

Local developer Childress Klein Properties is close to finishing Element Uptown, a 22-story apartment tower that sits across MLK Boulevard from both the ballpark and Romare Bearden Park. Spectrum Properties has just started development on a 177-unit apartment project across Fourth Street from the outfield fence and Woodfield Investments is planning another multifamily project across Graham Street from the third-base side of the ballpark. Real estate sources have said that another developer is looking to build a large apartment project close to the parks.

A Mellow Mushroom restaurant has opened on the ground floor of the Catalyst apartment tower, and Marsoun said a handful of quick-serve restaurants have been added to the mix at Latta Arcade, which is the interior portion of Brevard Court.

“No way those projects come to that area without the ballpark and Romare Bearden,” Marsoun said. “They had plenty of opportunity to go around there before the ballpark came.

“Having the ballpark and Romare Bearden will absolutely create a sense of place (in Uptown). Stores and restaurants will build their webs to catch the bugs that will be flying around.”

Knights negotiate move

The idea of having a ballpark in the heart of Charlotte wasn’t unanimously seen as a good idea.

Although it is being credited with drawing to the neighborhood high-rise towers and new bars, quite a few people balked at the plan in the beginning, especially when it involved the use of public funds.

Before this season, the Knights since 1990 had been playing home games in Fort Mill, S.C. Attendance for Knights games began falling in the last several years and the organization and many fans began to express a desire for an Uptown stadium, which they said would attract more fans and create a better experience.

Mecklenburg County owned a piece of land in the Third Ward in which the Knights were interested, as well as an adjacent 5.4-acre parcel, both of which were covered in surface parking. The county decided to build an urban park on its 5.4-acre parcel and began negotiating with the Knights on bringing a ballpark to the other parcel.

In July 2011, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners voted to approve letting the Knights use that parcel for their ballpark, on the condition that the team meet several financing and construction deadlines; pay $1 per year to lease the county land; and refrain from asking the county for more money.

Instead of asking the county for money, the Knights went to the city, which in June 2012 approved giving about $8 million to the team to help finance the $54 million ballpark. The city will pay that money over 20 years, as long as the Knights are playing baseball in that ballpark. Construction started on BB&T Ballpark in October 2012, meeting city and county deadlines.

Between county approval of the ballpark and the start of construction, work had begun on Romare Bearden Park. The county in February 2012 awarded a $7.8 million contract for park construction and Romare Bearden was completed well before the ballpark.

A place for gathering

Rhett Crocker, partner of landscape architecture with LandDesign who designed Romare Bearden, said that with the park being next to the baseball stadium, the goal – of the designer, the city and the county – was to create a sense of place, a center of activity for the people of Charlotte to congregate before, during and after baseball season.

“The design of it was, big picture, looking at creating that special place for downtown Charlotte,” Crocker said. “We wanted people to be in (Romare Bearden) park and still be connected to baseball. You can be in the park and see the activities going on in the stadium.

“We wanted a great place for pregame and postgame activity. Whether it’s a concert or tailgating, having this large area that’s open to the public was a big driver, but being connected to the rest of the city was also important.”

At the home opener of BB&T Ballpark, that vision played out. Pedestrian traffic flowed from the bars and restaurants on Church Street past the food trucks and ticket scalpers along Third Street, down to the concert lawn bordering Mint Street, into the ballpark for the evening game.

That is exactly the kind of atmosphere the Knights were never able to create when the team played in Fort Mill. The old stadium was built on 32 acres at an interchange of Interstate 77 that wasn’t yet primed for commercial development. People would drive to the stadium, watch the game, get back in their cars and go home. There was no park for a pregame concert, no bars or restaurants for a postgame drink, and certainly no residential development.

“That area was not one of the more quickly developed areas of the county,” said Mark Farris, economic development director of York County. “It was simply a matter of time before that side of the interstate became more densely developed, but it didn’t happen while the Knights were here.”

Farris said the Knights funded the construction of the stadium and, in turn, were allowed to lease the stadium land for $1 per year essentially tax free. The only money the county put into the site was infrastructure costs, he said. That being the case, the economic impact of having the Knights was much smaller than it will be in Charlotte, which also means there won’t be a significant economic decrease in Fort Mill without the team.

“If you think about the potential revenue derived from sports facilities, it’s a function of surrounding areas that benefit,” Farris said. “The benefits will accrue more directly to the businesses that are close to the facility. It’s a safe bet that the economic development around the Charlotte ballpark will be much greater.”

Momentum shift

While Farris said there’s little bitterness in Fort Mill toward the Knights – even if some are nostalgic – he questioned if the team will be able to attract fans to maintain the food trucks, wall-to-wall bar crowds and ticket scalpers.

“We’re happy for the Knights,” Farris said. “But I laugh because for the first three years in Fort Mill, the Knights had the highest attendance in the league. Then it dropped off.”

That’s where Romare Bearden Park comes into play. Jason Fish, director of development at Spectrum Properties, said the park is just as important to the big picture as BB&T Ballpark.

“Part of the development boom in that area is due to the park itself,” he said. “If it’s just the ballpark, it’s going to appeal to only a certain segment of the population. But everybody wants to live near a park and be able to do activities within the park, even if you have no interest in baseball.”

Fish said the combination of the ballpark, Romare Bearden Park and the current development has shifted the momentum in Uptown to this area. Marsoun said it has become the new center of activity in Uptown.

Ron Kimble, Charlotte’s deputy city manager, said he may have to run new numbers. Kimble said the city estimated that in the 10 years after the ballpark opened, around $300 million would be spent on new development near the two parks.

“The BB&T Ballpark is very special,” he said. “Its location next to Romare Bearden really creates a destination for our city and county, but the impact may be greater than what we anticipated it would be.”

Not bad for city blocks that three years ago were nothing more than paved parking lots.