Shorenstein Sells Charlotte Office Campus

Commons at the Park. Image via Google Street View

Shorenstein Properties LLC has sold the Commons at the Park, a 430,000-square-foot, two-building adaptive reuse campus on a 63-acre wooded site in the University Park area of Charlotte, N.C., Shorenstein announced on Monday, Dec 19. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The buyer was Albemarle Corp., a chemicals supplier headquartered in Charlotte, which had a week earlier announced its plans for a $200 million lithium research center at the campus. Albemarle operates the only currently active lithium mine in the U.S., at Silver Peak, Nev.

READ ALSO: Top 5 Southeast Markets for Office Deliveries

In addition, Blue Ridge Public Radio reported that the Charlotte region has large deposits of lithium, and that Albemarle is making plans to reopen an old lithium mine at Kings Mountain, N.C., where it already operates a lithium processing plant.

The Commons at the Park was completed in 1982 and was originally an industrial building, according to information from CommercialEdge.

Shorenstein acquired the property in 2019 and by 2021 had completely renovated it into a creative office campus with such amenities as a fitness center, conference and training center, a future café and 1.5-acre park. The location, at 6800 Solectron Drive, is minutes from Uptown and UNC Charlotte.

Progress on absorption

The Charlotte office market is seeing substantial net absorption, heavily concentrated in newly completed buildings, showing the flight to quality seen in so many other markets, according to a third-quarter report from JLL.

About 3.6 million square feet of office space is under construction, with construction starts seeming to taper off. The overall vacancy is 17.6 percent, which is projected to fall somewhat.

One of the bigger news items on Charlotte’s office scene was the August announcement that the Bank of London will be locating its second hub in the U.S. in a 40,000-square-foot space at One Independence Center in Charlotte.