Construction begins to turn Uptown office tower into luxury apartments
Construction has started to transform the old Duke Energy headquarters on South Church Street into 460 luxury apartments with ground-floor retail.
Why it matters: The $250 million Brooklyn & Church project is Uptown's first office-to-mixed-use conversion. It comes as about 25% of Uptown's 21 million square feet of office space is vacant, according to commercial real estate firm CBRE's Q1 2025 report.
The latest: Charlotte-based Asana Partners and Washington, D.C.-based MRP Realty, in collaboration with Rockefeller Group, celebrated construction commencing at the '70s-era building on Thursday.
"This city block has really been left pretty stagnant since the 1970s," Reed Kracke, partner at Asana Partners, said at the groundbreaking. "We're really excited as a team for the opportunity to reinvent it."
The 30-month construction project is now expected to be completed in Q4 2027.
Zoom in: The 13-story tower's core and shell will be preserved, while the façade will get a makeover with new windows and balconies.
Site plans also call for 57,000 square feet of retail, including a new three-story, 30,000-square-foot building at the corner of Church Street and Brooklyn Village Avenue.
The big picture: Brooklyn & Church is anticipated to energize this prominent corner near Bank of America Stadium, with new retail and a more walkable layout planned.
"This is a corner of Uptown that really hasn't been activated in a long time," says Patrick Sullivan, senior vice president of acquisitions and asset management at MRP Realty. "There's just so much opportunity to capture people that come to the stadium and also create more of a 24/7-type environment."
Asana managing director Welch Liles says the leasing process is still very early, but interest is strong. Asana will aim to have the majority of tenants open by early 2028, soon after construction wraps.
"We really started marketing to retailers in January," Welch says. "We are hoping to get a good mix of new-to-market...food and beverage-type users, along with some local, regional users. And I think it's gonna be a great curated mix."
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