BREAKING: Spectrum Center, bus station eyed for $275M makeover
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A ‘new Buzz City’? $275M agreement between city and Hornets; major arena renovation + a practice facility redevelopment on site of Charlotte Transportation Center
By Tony Mecia and Cristina Bolling
The city of Charlotte has reached an agreement with the Charlotte Hornets to spend $215M on renovations to the Spectrum Center — and put in an additional $60M for a Hornets training facility on the site of the bus station across the street.
The plan would move the bus facility underground.
The agreement, which was presented to the City Council on Tuesday, also extends the Hornets’ lease in the city-owned Spectrum Center for an additional 15 years, until 2045. The City Council still must approve the deal, which seems likely.
Under its current agreement with the Hornets, the city is contractually obligated to pay for upgrades to the Spectrum Center, which opened in 2005. The money will come from tourism funds, such as money from hotel and rental car taxes, which must be spent on tourism-related projects, the city says.
The elements of the project would be:
Hornets practice facility on site of bus station
Redeveloping the bus station uptown with a building that includes a Hornets practice facility could inject life in the area, city staffers say. (Renderings presented by city staff to City Council on Tuesday)
Assistant City Manager Tracy Dodson described the redevelopment of the Charlotte Transportation Center as a chance to inject life and new development into an area that could be a “community gathering space.” At the moment, the city is looking at placing buses underground, with street-level retail and the Hornets facilities, parking and possible other development above:
Below-ground transit, street level retail and above-ground parking and Hornets training center are the current plans for the bus station.
She said the area could be called “the new Buzz City,” referencing a term the Hornets use at their games to describe their home in Charlotte.
“You start to create this vibrant festival street, and almost this community district opportunity, a community gathering space,” she said.
She said the city could offset some of the costs by selling naming rights for the district.
If somehow the Hornets’ practice facility doesn’t come together on the bus station site, it could go on an adjacent city-owned gravel lot, she said.
Arena renovations
The upgrades to the arena would be from the floor to the ceiling, said Hornets president Fred Whitfield. The changes would include:
likely replacing heating and air conditioning systems
fixing the roof
improving escalators and elevators
enhancing bathrooms
adding entrances and exits, which would reduce long lines
“We think our building will be as nice a building as you can play in for years to come,” Whitfield said in a Tuesday afternoon session with reporters. “... We love Charlotte. We love being here. We love calling this home.”
City officials cast the agreement as a needed and required upgrade to the arena, with the benefit of helping spur development on the site of the Charlotte Transportation Center on the other side of Trade Street as well as locking in the Hornets to a long-term commitment to stay in Charlotte. The arena is also used for community events, like high school graduations, and other performances.
Next steps
Mayor Vi Lyles said the issue would be discussed in an economic development committee meeting, where council members could more fully discuss the issue. City staffers suggested that construction could start as soon as this summer.
Council members on Tuesday seemed generally receptive to the proposed agreement. Republican Ed Driggs said he didn’t like the existing contract with the Hornets that obligated the city to pay so much for renovations. But he said proceeding seemed sensible.
Future of Transportation Center: The proposal comes as the city has been working on the future of the Transportation Center on Trade Street — which happens to be across the light rail line from the Epicentre, whose future is uncertain.
In 2019, the Charlotte Area Transit Service chose developers White Point Partners and Dart Interests to come up with a privately funded project that would incorporate a new publicly financed transit station.
White Point and Dart proposed two plans, with nearly 700,000 s.f. of office space, up to 60,000 s.f. of retail and amenities and hotel rooms. One plan called for a complete redevelopment, with a temporary bus location next to the current site while a new one would be built at the current location. A second plan would have shifted the transit center one block southwest, the Charlotte Business Journal reported at the time.
In November 2021, the federal government awarded CATS a $15M grant to help pay for replacing the transportation center. There was no timeline given about when construction would happen, but city economic development officials said at the time that the federal money would be available in 2024 and would need to be spent by 2029.
White Point also purchased land including surface parking lots near the transit center, and company co-founder Jay Levell was quoted in the New York Times in a December 2019 article titled “Parking lots, once asphalt wasteland, become golden opportunities.”
➡️ Learn more: Read the media fact sheet distributed tonight to reporters
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Contributing photographer/videographer: Kevin Young, The 5 and 2 Project
I thought the existing CTC was being relocated to the new Charlotte Gateway Station?
Charlotte CAT’s is a century behind modernization. ID cards should be photo ID’s, should have a photo of the card holder and should be connected to a credit card. Why in a new century does one have to hold to swipe an ID Transit card, a paper back of money and a tiny coin to drop into the machine? All these should be combined into one PHOTO ID Card that does everything as the MTA in NYC does. Educate those making these antique decisions to learn and put into action a contemporary transit card for all.