MRP Realty, Asana Partners and the Rockefeller Group announced the first joint venture between their firms and the final close of funding for the Brooklyn & Church redevelopment. The partnership closed with lenders on construction financing for the conversion of the former Duke Energy headquarters located at 526 S. Church Street in Charlotte. When completed, the project will consist of 460 apartments and 57,000 square feet of retail.

The first conversion of office to mixed-use in Charlotte, the 800,000-square-foot building will repurpose the 1970s office tower into loft-style apartments with ground-floor retail and a new three-story, 30,000-square-foot retail building at the corner of Church Street and Brooklyn Village Avenue. 

Brooklyn & Church will rise thirteen stories and provide modern industrial loft-style living and balconies. The building’s core and shell will be preserved, and the façade will be completely reskinned, providing new glass windows and spacious balconies.

Eight years ago Duke Health began acquiring land to build out the campus in Cary. In 2022, the health system opened its first facilities at the site. The campus currently houses about 100,000 square feet of primary care, pediatric, urgent care and some speciality services.

The Raleigh Business Journal reports Duke has received approval from state regulators for a new 40-bed hospital at Green Level W. Road near Hwy. 540. The next phase of the project, which Duke is beginning now, involves building out 111,000 square feet of for hospital. Duke hopes to have this next phase open by 2027.

In addition to the beds, Duke has approval for operating rooms, spaces for gastrointestinal endoscopy, a CT scanner and a linear accelerator, which is used to treat cancer patients.

The former Duke Energy building in downtown Charlotte is going down. It needs to be demolished so Asana Partners and MRP Realty can move forward on their $250 million redevelopment plan. The Charlotte Business Journal reports the building at 526 S. Church St. won’t be demolished until the fall, and construction should start soon after. Full delivery is slated for the fourth quarter of 2026. The project team includes SK&I Architecture, LandDesign, Morris Adjmi Architects and Balfour Beatty.

The plan includes converting the 1970s-era office tower into 448 luxury apartments with 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and demolishing the front lobby and atrium. That would reduce the total square footage by about 230,000 and make way for a three-story, 30,000-square-foot retail building.

Asana Partners and MRP paid $35 million for the site in December 2022.

Duke Energy Plaza is moving into a new 40-story tower at 525 S. Tryon St.

Duke University paid an apartment owner $43 million to take over the Blue Light Living apartments. The school will add the apartments to the school’s housing inventory, instead of building new ones. The school plans to make a number of minor changes to the 84-unit building before allowing students to move in next fall.

The Triad Business Journal reports the school says the sale is a way to deal with the area’s acute student housing shortage. The move by Duke comes as the university experiences a record high number of student applications. The apartments at 1605 Erwin Road in Durham have a total assessed value of about $10 million. It was owned by the Boy family.

Duke is not the only area school grappling with the student housing issue. Johnson & Wales University, a private college with a campus in North Carolina, announced plans to convert a hotel it owns in Charlotte into student housing.