Study: Charlotte posts 27th best-performing economy

A new study by the Milken Institute suggests Charlotte still has work to do when it comes to economic performance. The study lists the Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, S.C., metropolitan area as having the 27th best-performing economy among large U.S. cities. And that's actually an improvement over the previous year, when Charlotte ranked 35th out of 200 cities.

The study measured categories such as jobs, wages, salary and technology output. Employment growth was weighted most heavily, according to this methodology explainer. Tech-heavy cities seemed to do well, with Austin, Tx., heading the list. The Raleigh-Cary area came in at No. 13, while Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, S.C., boasts the highest ranking for any city in the Carolinas, coming in at No. 11.

Is Ballantyne getting a new 11-story office building?

Could Ballantyne Corporate Park be on the cusp of another expansion?

Ray Eschert, founder of the Ballantyne Breakfast Club, sent out an email Thursday afternoon saying that at the club's Jan. 11 meeting, Bissell Cos. vice president Barry Fabyan will "discuss the latest growth coming to Ballantyne including the announcement of a new 11-story office building."

Eschert, whose deep community ties earned him the nickname "mayor of Ballantyne," told me in a phone conversation that Bissell made a "tentative announcement" of its plans  more than a month ago during a meeting of the Charlotte Chamber's Ballantyne chapter. Eschert said his understanding is that the new building will go near where the Aloft Hotel sits on Ballantyne Corporate Place.

When asked about Eschert's email, Bissell spokeswoman Christina Thigpen responded with an email of her own. "We are always thinking about where the next building will go," she wrote. "Barry will discuss Ballantyne's growth and potential building locations; however, we will not be making an official announcement."

Given Bissell's recent success building office towers without an anchor tenant lined up, it would hardly be surprising if they were doing so once again. The company went right on building speculative towers during the downturn, when other developers retrenched. Ballantyne Corporate Park last year won the U.S. retail headquarters of insurance giant MetLife in part because it had two 10-story buildings available to accommodate the company's 1,300-plus employees.

Charlotte economic developer: Boeing's a 'long shot'

Speaking to a gathering of corporate real estate professionals today, one of the region's top job recruiters said Charlotte is a "long shot" to win the emerging national bidding war for Boeing's planned 777X aircraft manufacturing plant.

Ronnie Bryant, CEO of the Charlotte Regional Partnership, made the comment during a speech at the City Club uptown to the Carolinas chapter of CoreNet Global, a professional group with chapters around the world. Bryant, whose group markets the 16-county Charlotte region to outside companies, said the Queen City is extremely competitive in recruiting jobs in many industries, including aerospace.

But referring to the quest to land the Boeing plant, he said: "I think it's a long shot for this market." Asked for elaboration after the event ended, Bryant told the Observer he didn't know if Charlotte and North Carolina would be able to match the kind of incentives other competitors are offering.

Charlotte is among more than a dozen cities and states submitting bids to win the plant and thousands of good-paying jobs that would come with it. Washington state, already home to a large Boeing presence, has offered an $8.7 billion incentives package to keep the new jobs there. "That's a big number," Bryant said. "We've never approved anything like that."

Gov. Pat McCrory and Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker have declined to talk about the project. Bryant said his group isn't involved. "I don't see it," he said, referring to the chances of Charlotte getting the plant. "But maybe someone sees something I don't see."

Charlotte's economic future hinges on minority influx, chamber head says

Charlotte Chamber President Bob Morgan told a group of tax and accounting professionals this morning that the Queen City has come out of the recession poised for strong economic and population growth. Speaking to the Dixon Hughes Goodman accounting firm's annual Executive Tax Briefing event at the Ritz Carlton, Morgan said the city was the fastest-growing urbanized area in the nation during the first decade of the 21st century. The county's population hit 1 million earlier this year, and he said projections call for the metropolitan area to hit 4.8 million people by 2030.

Morgan attributed the growth to several factors: the continued migration of people from the Northeast to the South and West, hurricane-weary ex-Northerners who want to leave Florida but don't want a full return to the snowy North, greater numbers of young people heading to Charlotte, and the reverse migration of African Americans to the South. He pointed to a report by Black Enterprise magazine that suggested Dallas, Atlanta and Charlotte are their top three destinations.

Bob Morgan (left) with Dixon Hughes Goodman regional managing partner Matt Snow

He put up a chart showing that while Charlotte grew by 32 percent in the first decade of the new century, the white population grew by 14 percent, compared to almost 50 percent growth in the African American population.

"We talk a lot at the chamber about the importance of diversity. Not only do we think it's the right thing to do, but we think there's a business case to be made in numbers like this," he said. "The trends of diversity are only going to increase as we go forward, and for us in the Chamber of Commerce that purports to represent this marketplace, if we don't understand and relate to this growing diversity, we're not going to be relevant at some point in the future."

He added that growth brings the kind of scale -- and workforce -- necessary to attract big companies like Siemens, the turbine engine manufacturer with a large and growing Charlotte operation off Westinghouse Boulevard. While few local officials are talking much about the city's effort to win Boeing's planned new 777X aircraft plant, Morgan said the success a big manufacturer like Siemens has enjoyed in Charlotte certainly wouldn't hurt the city's case.

"As we go about pitching Charlotte to companies like Boeing, you can be sure that the Siemens story will be a key part of what we talk about."

Boeing deadline day arrives

Today's the deadline for Charlotte and the dozen or more other interested states and cities to submit applications in hopes of landing the Boeing plant that will build the new 777X airliner. It's perhaps the biggest job recruitment prize to come up for grabs around here in years. If Gov. Pat McCrory and Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker feel good about the locations the state is submitting for Boeing's consideration, they weren't saying yesterday when my colleagues and I asked about it during a Charlotte Chamber event.

Several people I've talked to in N.C. economic development circles privately question whether North Carolina really has a fighting chance. They speculate that Boeing is just shopping the plant around to get the union there in Washington state to accept concessions. (If this letter from an upset Boeing machinist is any guide, the company's ties to the Puget Sound region run extremely deep, and yet union sentiment is strongly against the deal). Judging from this New York Times report, and other things I've read, it appears the machinists feel their experience and expertise in building airplanes make it a risky proposition for Boeing to go elsewhere. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee went so far as to use the words "potential disaster" to describe the kind of delays Boeing has seen at its Charleston, S.C. plant.

Clearly Washington's not letting its largest private employer go without a fight. Lawmakers there last month passed an $8.7 billion incentives package that some call the largest in U.S. history. Is Boeing worth that high a price? I guess we'll see soon enough what North Carolina and Charlotte have to say about that.

Is a Charlotte-Triad-Triangle 'Megalopolis' in North Carolina's future?

UNC Chapel Hill researchers are projecting that by 2050, North Carolina could well have its own version of the so-called 'Megalopolis' that is today's Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia-New York City-Boston corridor. A new study by the Carolina Population Center at UNC suggests that by 2050, the Charlotte-Greensboro-Raleigh corridor will have grown into an urbanized corridor similar to the one comprised by the major metros of the Northeast. (Check out the video simulation below showing what the mapped-out version of the N.C. data looks like over time).

The study uses Census data and demographic analysis to map out the state's housing growth from 1940 to 2050. It puts new statistical context on a dynamic we already know about -- that lots of people and industry are moving to the state. (My story on today's front page reinforces the rising development profile of both Charlotte and Raleigh). But that growth could also pose planning challenges, and the study's authors say it raises questions about the need for new roads, water lines and other infrastructure investments.

“This is one potential look at the future,” said Rebecca Tippett, director of Carolina Demography, the unit at the Carolina Population Center that produced the data. “Where and how development occurs is very responsive to policy and planning, and I hope this sparks conversations about what we might want North Carolina to look like in 2050.”

I found myself trying to imagine what smaller cities like Salisbury and Lexington would look like and feel like if the urban sprawl from Charlotte and Greensboro and Raleigh overtook them. They all have that sleepy small-town feel when you drive through (or more accurately, past) them on Interstate 85. Hard to imagine them as fully urbanized arms of Charlotte and Greenville. But then again, people in Atlanta probably never figured on the Braves moving to Cobb County, either.

Do you think it'll happen? If it does, would a hyper-urbanized Interstate 85 corridor be a good thing for North Carolina? 

More development in FreeMore West/Freedom Drive corridor

Stophel Commercial Properties says it recently closed on the 55,000-square-foot former Berry Manufacturing building at 1921 Freedom Drive. It's the latest bit of development on the still-blossoming area around West Morehead Street and Freedom Drive that boosters have dubbed FreeMore West. Stophel plans to house several of its businesses -- Carpet One and the Stophel REO Group -- in the building, which it bought from F&N Family Partnership of Lawrence, N.Y., for an undisclosed sum. (The property has an assessed value of $1.3 million). Jim McAuliffe of NMKT Commercial represented Stophel in the deal; Brooks Whiteside of Whiteside Industrial represented the seller.

The area continues to develop nicely. Years ago, I used to get my beloved but constantly malfunctioning '95 Audi  fixed at the repair shop at Freedom and Morehead. Wasn't much else happening to bring me to that area then. But now the repair shop is Pinky's Westside Grill (love that they kept the VW Beetle on the roof), one of an array of cool new eateries in the area. More residential development is on the way as well. Ryan Homes and the Simonini Group broke ground in September on their planned 251-home project at Bryant Park, situated on 30 acres on Millerton Avenue off West Morehead. Nice to see the area continuing to bloom.