Land Disposition Strategy & Solicitation and Transaction Support for Mecklenburg County

Mecklenburg County successfully secured a master redevelopment agreement to transform underutilized county-owned sites into vibrant mixed-use development.

CHALLENGE

In 2015, Mecklenburg County owned a set of valuable sites with significant redevelopment potential in Charlotte’s growing Uptown, but lacked a clear path to realizing policy goals on the sites, including the generation of revenue and delivery of open space, affordable housing, and new infrastructure. The County required analytical support and strategic guidance to understand the market and surrounding development climate, and move toward a plan for action around each of the sites.
 

Solution

HR&A led the County through a land disposition strategy planning process, providing recommendations for site disposition sequence and strategies that would attract a strong response from the real estate development community. Core work during this stage included: identifying the highest and best use program for each site, testing program alternatives to understand the impact of incorporating policy priorities included affordable housing and infrastructure improvement within each site, developing a valuation for each site and estimating the associated fiscal impacts to the County, and evaluating options for disposition timing and solicitation processes.
 
The County elected to move forward on disposition for two sites in the Second Ward. HR&A supported the drafting, marketing, and release of a Request for Qualifications and subsequent Request for Proposals for Brooklyn Village and Walton Plaza. Our team ensured that the development community was aware of the opportunity associated with these sites and that solicitation documents clearly conveyed the County’s goals for a public private partnership to deliver a significant new mixed-use program and key public benefits, including open space, affordable housing, and new infrastructure across 16 acres, which will transform this area of Uptown Charlotte.
 

IMPACT

The County’s solicitations received strong responses from local and national developers. HR&A guided the development of criteria for the County’s evaluation of proposals and performed an independent evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each, including a comparison of the economic proposals. Once the County selected a developer, HR&A supported negotiations of key business terms with the preferred development team, BK Partners, a collaboration between local developer Conformity Corporation and the Peebles Corporation. The County and BK Partners executed a term sheet in August 2017, and the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners approved a master redevelopment agreement between the County and BK Partners in July 2018.