The North Carolina Department of Transportation has floated allowing parts of the planned I-77 interstate expansion to be constructed underground, after dismissing the idea as too expensive just a month prior, according to a Charlotte Observer report. 

NCDOT indicated that underground expansion of the highway was back on the table during a city of Charlotte transportation committee meeting Thursday and invited developers to get creative about overall plans for how to make the expansion happen.

The transportation department had initially rejected the idea of underground tunnels in early February, Axios reported. The $3.2B expansion project would add two lanes, both north and south, on a section of I-77 spanning 11 miles. 

NCDOT announced last week it would initiate a three-month delay on its request for proposals for the expansion. 

There has been growing pushback to the project from nearby residents, while Charlotte’s business community has signaled that abandoning the planned infrastructure investment would stifle local development.

The proposed design for the expansion is only 10% to 15% complete. Final design isn’t expected to be completed until the end of 2027, according to an NCDOT press release.

Current plans call for the interstate to be widened through the southern portion of the city and elevated above uptown, then returning downward to connect with existing toll lanes already open from north of uptown to Iredell County. 

The project was first proposed by the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization in 2014 and placed on a long-range planning document. 

A public-private funding plan was approved in 2024. It includes $600M of state funding, with the remainder to be funded privately and recovered via commuters’ tolls, the CBJ reported.

Last week, the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, a community advocacy organization, announced it was seeking a temporary restraining order to pause the project. 

Opponents of the plan have criticized the above-ground design favored by NCDOT, saying it would bring increased air and noise pollution to primarily minority neighborhoods and displace residents. For some Charlotte residents, the expansion harkens back to earlier injury done to their neighborhoods. 

Robert McCutcheon, president and CEO of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, acknowledged that past highway projects have disproportionately impacted Black neighborhoods in Charlotte in a Feb. 24 op-ed in The Charlotte Observer. However, McCutcheon argued that abandoning the project would forfeit state investment in the city’s roads while hurting small businesses, worsening congestion and reducing workforce access. 

“Walking away does not eliminate growth pressures. It risks sending investment elsewhere,” McCutcheon stated in the op-ed.

The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, made up of regional governments, ultimately must vote on whatever proposal NCDOT puts forward.

Craig Idlebrook contributed to this story.

Several shopping centers in the Midwest were part of New York-based KPR Centers’ acquisition of an eight-property retail portfolio for $180 million.  

KPR Centers expanded its presence in the Midwest region through the transaction, which the properties located in Milwaukee and St. Louis as well as Florida. The portfolio is 96 percent leased and totals over 1.5 million square feet, with shopping centers anchored by tenants like Dick’s Sporting Goods and The Fresh Market.

The Midwest properties include the 220,083-square-foot Nagawaukee Center in Delafield and the West Allis Towne Center, a four-building site spanning 326,223 square feet. Additional retail centers in the portfolio are the 208,112-square-foot Deer Creek Shopping Center in St. Louis and Central Plaza, a 163,625-square-foot retail center in Ballwin.

Bisnow/Jon Banister

WashREIT’s office building at 1775 Eye St. NW

The picture of how much commodity office buildings in D.C. are selling for post-pandemic is getting clearer now that the prices Brookfield Asset Management paid for a chunk of WashREIT’s office portfolio have become public.

The D.C.-based REIT announced last week it closed on the 12-building, $766M portfolio sale, which was the culmination of a major restructuring effort, and documents were posted Tuesday in the D.C. Recorder of Deeds showing the individual sale prices for five D.C. office buildings. 

• The office building at 1775 Eye St. NW sold for $80.5M, deed records show. The building, constructed in 1964, is 87% occupied and totals 188K SF, according to WashREIT’s Q2 earnings supplement, meaning the sale came out to $428/SF. 
• The Army-Navy Building at 1627 Eye St. NW sold for $64M, deed records show. According to WashREIT’s Q2 earnings, the building was 97% leased and totals 108K SF, putting the deal at $593/SF. 
• The 1901 Pennsylvania Ave. NW office building sold for $40.3M, deed records show. It was 81% leased as of Q2 and totals 101K SF, putting the deal at $399/SF. 
• The 1140 Connecticut Ave. NW office building sold for $38.8M, deed records show. It was 82% leased as of Q2 and totals 184K SF, putting the sale at $211/SF. 
• The building at 1220 19th St. NW sold for $24.25M, deed records show. Built in 1976, it was 85% occupied as of Q2 and totaled 103K SF, putting the deal at $235/SF. 

The sixth D.C. building sale it announced it was selling to Brookfield, 2000 M St. NW, appears to be owned under a ground-lease structure and the latest sale wasn’t recorded Tuesday. The six other office buildings in the 12-property portfolio were in Northern Virginia, with three in Arlington, two in Alexandria and one in Tysons. 

WashREIT still owns one office building, 600 Watergate, which it said in June it plans to sell separately “when practicable.” WashREIT CEO Paul McDermott said on the firm’s Q2 earnings call last week it expects to hold onto the property at least for the rest of this year, calling it the “best office asset that we had owned,” according to a Motley Fool transcript. 

The REIT also said in June it had signed a letter of intent to sell its eight remaining retail assets, as it shifts to becoming a multifamily-only REIT. WashREIT also said it plans to expand its multifamily portfolio to new Southeast markets including Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, and it plans to focus on middle-income renters. 

On the earnings call, McDermott said WashREIT sees strong growth drivers in the multifamily sector, a stark contrast to what it was seeing in the office market. 

“In office, we were facing challenging and increasing headwinds, including increase in capital requirements, and we expect those headwinds to continue,” McDermott said. “This contrast in growth prospects boosts our confidence that will create more values for our investors going forward through our portfolio recalibration.”

The company said in June that it aims to transfer the majority of its office personnel to Brookfield, and on the earnings call McDermott said he is grateful to the departing staff and will miss them. 

“I’ll be blunt, it’s been an emotional week here, saying goodbye to colleagues that we’ve had the privilege to work with as we work up to this transformation,” McDermott said, according to the transcript. “But what that has left us with is an outstanding multifamily team to build a platform off of.”