Big speculative building going up in Concord

The Silverman Group out of New Jersey is doing something that hasn't gotten done very often around here in recent years: it's breaking ground on a big speculative industrial building, and betting that tenants will come later. The firm says it's breaking ground this week on a 400,000-square-foot building in Concord Airport Business Park. For comparison sake, when insurance giant MetLife announced this spring that it is bringing its U.S. retail business hub to Charlotte, officials said the firm would occupy roughly 340,000 square feet in Ballantyne Corporate Park.

"The market for Class A distribution space in the greater Charlotte market is very tight," said Blake Silverman, president of the Silverman Group. "There are no Class A vacancies greater than 200,000 square feet, which is why we were intrigued by this opportunity ... There are currently very few buildings in the market to accommodate tenants needing large blocks of space."

Boosters for uptown Charlotte have been saying they need more large blocks of office space, but wary developers haven't been willing to put up the massive amount of capital it would take to put another skyscraper in without a major tenant already lined up.

Construction on the Concord building is slated to start in the first quarter of 2014 with completion expected in late summer. Christopher Skibinski, an Avison Young principal based in Charlotte, is the leasing agent.