COMMERCIAL CONFIDENTIAL: Levine Properties’ First Ward apartments

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CHARLOTTE – Local developer Levine Properties plans to start work this summer on a 260-unit apartment project in Uptown’s First Ward.

Brian Nicholson, director of construction and development with Levine, said the company will apply for building permits in May and expects to receive them within two months. Construction will begin immediately after the permits are received and the project is expected to be finished by early 2016, he said.

The project, which is being called 10th Street Apartments on city documents, will be built on the block where College and Brevard streets intersect 11th Street, and will include a 1,400-space public parking deck that’s part of a much bigger mixed-use development that Levine Properties has been planning with the city and Mecklenburg County for years.

Levine has submitted engineering documents to the city, the city development services website shows. City engineering is one of the preliminary steps to starting a development and must be approved before Mecklenburg County can issue building permits for a project.

According to Mecklenburg County property records, a company called Ninth Street Investors LLC owns about 6 acres – across three parcels – in the same area the apartments are planned. A quick search on the N.C. Secretary of State’s website showed that Ninth Street Investors is a company owned by Daniel Levine, who owns Levine Properties.

Nicholson said the apartment community won’t be a part of the planned $700 million urban village in First Ward, but said it will be in the same area.

Levine announced in September 2012 that the company was launching the ambitious, 15-year public-private project to transform nine blocks – or 30 acres, 23 of which belong to him and his family – of First Ward, which is now largely a landscape of surface parking lots. Plans call for the urban village to include a park, 1,500 apartments, 1.5 million square feet of offices, 350 hotel rooms, 350,000 square feet of retail, three parking decks and a new set of streets and sidewalks.

When the plans were announced, Levine said he hoped to start construction on the first phase – the county park, roadwork paid for almost entirely by the city of Charlotte, two parking decks and 200 apartments –in December 2012 or January 2013. After those months came and went, Levine said last year that work was being held up by government red tape.

W. Lee Jones, capital planning division director for the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Department, said the county met with Levine last week to discuss the parks portion of the redevelopment, which may mean that the urban village is getting closer to a start date.

Project description: Levine Properties is close to applying for building permits from Mecklenburg County that would allow the developer to start work on an apartment project and a large parking deck in Uptown’s First Ward.

Address: On the block where College and Brevard streets meet Ninth Street.

Units: 260

Parking deck size: 1,400 spaces

Status: Levine will apply for building permits this month.

Construction start date: Expected to start later in the summer

Expected completion: Early 2016