Centene Corp.’s decision to ax its plans for an East Coast headquarters and campus in Charlotte’s University City leaves a new office building and large undeveloped site without a user. Cushman & Wakefield is working with Centene to market the campus, which is more than 130 acres, for lease or sale. The 800,000-square-foot office building there is set to deliver in the coming weeks, bringing “extremely prime space” available for users, Brett Gray, managing principal at Cushman & Wakefield’s Charlotte office, told the Charlotte Business Journal.
Gray said it is rare for new, Class A office space of this size to be available in the Charlotte market. Cushman & Wakefield’s Rob Cochran and Bill Harrison will lead the marketing effort for the brokerage.
“We’re in an interesting time in the market in that everything that has been delivered has largely been leased up,” Gray said. “A lot of these new buildings that are being delivered are not going to be delivered until 2024 at the earliest, with some going into 2025 and beyond.”
The office building was built for a single-tenant, headquarters type of use, but could potentially be converted to multitenant if needed, Gray said. Gray believes a C-suite-type of headquarters office user would still fit best there.
The site could be sold to a new user or to an investor, Gray said. The site’s size and vacant land also open it up to a range of opportunities for future development. Some market observers have mused that it could include a mix of uses to complement the office campus, and Gray didn’t rule out more office development there. He added that Centene has been “laser-focused” on finding the right partner for the community to take over the site.
“I think it provides opportunity and what it does is provides a blank slate for a user or an investor for future growth there,” Gray said of the additional land at the Centene site. “Could this be phase two long term? Could it be a complementary use? Certainly, there are some fundamentals that may differ from a Ballantyne or Kingsley, which sits off I-77. This is going to be a little more secluded within the University submarket without that direct frontage. So, you’ll see some things that work and don’t work as a result of that. But for a lot of people, it creates … an attractive campus environment that can make it quite unique for someone.”
Cushman & Wakefield is in the packaging phase of its work for the Centene site and plans to fully launch its marketing effort in the coming months, Gray said.
Centene acquired the site in 2020 for $19 million and construction started in August of that year. A dedication ceremony was held there last June.
Copyright: Charlotte Business Journal