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Real Estate - Commercial

Redevelopment Key To Building Projects

By Cece Nunn, posted Dec 5, 2014
Karyn Oetting opened Second Skin Vintage in a previously vacant space at 615 Castle St. in November. Business owners and developers are taking a closer look at reviving empty spaces as developable land becomes scarce in Wilmington.(Photo by Chris Brehmer)
Although new homes and businesses are taking shape in some previously undeveloped parts of the Wilmington area, revitalization and redevelopment are expected to become increasingly important, a city official said recently.

“Things are heading in that direction because we’re going to run out of land,” said Allen Davis, urban planner with the city of Wilmington.

And while the land is running out, more people are moving in, with 60,000 new Wilmington residents expected in the next 25 years.

“We’ve got to absorb that growth somehow,” Davis said.

That’s where revitalization and redevelopment are expected to come in. Three different parts of the city serve as examples of what the future might hold: A rise in residential and commercial activity has boosted Castle Street recently, new office space is on the way downtown, and a developer is preparing to transform The Galleria, a former shopping center near Wrightsville Beach, into a mixed-use project.

CASTLE STREET

Karyn Oetting opened Second Skin Vintage, a vintage clothing store, on Nov. 21 in a previously vacant storefront at 615 Castle St.

“When I was trying to figure out where I wanted to open my business, location was one of the major questions,” Oetting said.

She wanted to be downtown, but said she found Castle Street to be a better alternative to Front Street because of the availability of parking, a lower lease rate and its vibrancy.

“What’s happened in the past five years on Castle Street is a diversification of the businesses,” she said. “That has helped bring a diverse group of shoppers to the street.”

Property owners seem even more interested now in revitalizing Castle Street’s commercial blocks and “are beginning to have the same vision as the merchants and willing to invest,” Oetting said.

In June, the Kids Making It Woodworking Program bought 617 Castle St., the nearly 5,000-square-foot space next to Second Skin Vintage, for $200,000 and moved from its downtown location to Castle Street this month. In a July Greater Wilmington Business Journal article, Kids Making It program director Jimmy Pierce said Castle Street is “clearly an up-and-coming area, and we are excited to be a part of it.” 

Revitalization efforts on Castle Street have been going on for at least 10 years, property and business owners say, but the economic downturn that started around 2008 slowed some of those efforts.

Renewed emphasis on revitalization is exciting to see, said Castle Street property owner Joseph Miller.

“We’re kind of hoping it keeps coming up the street towards us,” said Miller, owner of Joe Miller Construction, who also owns a mixed-use building at Eighth and Castle streets that includes apartments, a salon and a convenience store.

Matt Scharf of Ritz Development 6 said his company plans to start construction in January at 608 Castle St. on a mixed-use building called Urban Oasis, which will have 11 apartments and 1,200 square feet of retail space.

After gaining approval from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, Scharf said the firm demolished a non-contributing, concrete block building, which didn’t fit into the streetscape and dated back to about 1951, to make way for the new building.

Scharf said a lot of thought has gone in to the placement and design of Urban Oasis, led by Bruce Bowman of Bowman Murray Hemingway Architects.

“We want it to work with everything there, the fabric of that immediate block,” Scharf said. 

“You want to be sensitive to that because you don’t want to just slap something up. You want it to fit right in like it’s been there. That’s what makes an area work.”
Scharf credits established business owners on Castle Street as leading the way for revitalization.

“The success of Castle Street has been Jamie Thompson and Jester’s and Wilmington Wine and the art and antique businesses,” he said.

“We’re just reacting to how well they’re doing. They’re bringing the people.”

OFFICE SPACE

This year, downtown Wilmington has experienced a surge in development and redevelopment.

At 101 N. Third St., a building that had housed PNC Bank was demolished to make way for a new, five-story office building currently under construction.

The first three floors of the new structure have been leased to BB&T, with a Dunkin’ Donuts expected to open in the first floor.

Brian Eckel of Cape Fear Commercial, whose company is developing the new office, has said the building is expected to be open by summer of next year. LS3P Associates designed the structure, and Barnhill Contracting Co. is the builder.

A different development company plans to renovate a well-known historic building in downtown Wilmington after buying it through an auction website. A $3.5 million project to bring the Murchison Building, at 201 N. Front St., up to date is expected to begin in the spring, said Thomas Simpson of the Murchison Group LLC.

He said when he and his partners bought the 10-story building in June for nearly $1.5 million, the occupancy rate was at about 35 percent.

“We have leases that are being negotiated, and by the end of this year, we will have the building about 70 percent occupied,” Simpson said in a recent interview.

THE GALLERIA

Before Thanksgiving, crews were demolishing a closed shopping center at 6800 Wrightsville Ave. to make way for a mixed-use project.

Opened in 1986, The Galleria encompassed more than 91,000 square feet and had 27 retail and office tenants in 2001, according to a Business Journal article from May of that year. Those tenants included Harris Teeter, Eckerd Drugs and BB&T, the article said.

Harris Teeter relocated to Lumina Commons, and the last of The Galleria’s tenants left in 2012, according to subsequent Business Journal articles.

Charlotte-based State Street Companies bought the 12-acre property at 6800 Wrightsville Ave. for $3.76 million in July 2013.

State Street has developed successful projects in Wilmington in the past, including The Village at Mayfaire, a 204-unit luxury condominium community, where sales were completed in December 2008, and The Reserve at Mayfaire, a 264-unit luxury apartment community, in 2005.

Formerly part of the town of Wrightsville Beach, The Galleria property was officially annexed into the city of Wilmington after the state signed off on the measure June 30 this year, and it was assigned a zoning classification of Urban Mixed Use, or UMX.

Davis said replacing the shuttered Galleria center with a mixed-use concept is a good example of what he thinks would become a planning and development trend.
“We met with the developer when we were going through that [rezoning] process, and he had a really good vision for that site,” Davis said.
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