Riverside Investment’s $750M Live-Work-Play Plan for Charlotte

The site of the new Morehead Tryon project in Charlotte. Image via Google Earth

Riverside Investment & Development is planning to link two neighborhoods in Charlotte, N.C., with a $750 million mixed-use development, according to Charlotte Business Journal. According to the developer’s website, the project, Morehead & Tryon, will occupy a site that is the gateway between the traditional central business district environment of Uptown and the dynamic vibe of the South End.

Morehead & Tryon will consist of three high-rise buildings that will sprout up at a prominent intersection with the address of 1111 S. Tryon St. The new development, Riverside claims, will become “the new market standard for technology, efficiency, and occupant health and wellness.”

The live-work-play destination will encompass 650 luxury multifamily units, 50,000 square feet of retail space and 800,000 square feet of Class A office space. Riverside has tapped the CBRE team of Joe Franco, Kris Westmoreland and Stephanie Spivey to spearhead office leasing for the project.

Numbers Can Be Deceiving

Riverside’s decision to incorporate nearly a million square feet of office space at Morehead & Tryon may not appear to be in accord with current office market statistics—the availability rate was 16.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 and more than 4.9 million square feet of product was under construction, according to a report by Savills—but change is afoot.

“Charlotte’s robust development pipeline is a bullish sign of higher office space demand in both the short- and long-term,” according to the Savills report. “Expect 2022 to see more companies from outside the market to become active in the market as corporate relocations could be accelerating again.”

Recent arrivals to Charlotte include St. Louis-based health-care administration corporation Centene, which announced in July 2020 that it had selected the city for a new $1 billion regional headquarters campus. In December 2020, U.K.-based electric vehicle manufacturer Arrival revealed it had chosen a 45,000-square-foot office space in the South End for its North American headquarters.