May. 20, 2008 
Condo project thrives in uncertain times 
NANCY STANCIL

From its elegant rosewood floors to its exposed concrete ceilings, the 3,500-square-foot uptown condo is a stunner

The $1.5 million home is open through Saturday as a charity project of the Charlotte Chapter of the Interior Design Society. The fourth-floor condo is one of eight in The Trust, a historic remodeled office building at 139 S. Tryon St.

But don't get your heart set on buying it. That condo is sold, along with six others in the building priced from $1.5 million to $4 million. There's only one left. It starts at $2 million, depending on finishes.

Developer Jim Donnelly expects the last one to be snapped up in the next few weeks.

Who's buying these high-end condos? Don't they worry about a recession? Do they think Charlotte is immune to bad economic times?

Donnelly, 39, says The Trust's buyers include one doctor, one investment banker, one NASCAR-connected businessman, three entrepreneurs and one developer.

Donnelly, his wife Stacy and their six-month-old son Griffin will move into The Trust in a month or two. They have a nice place in Eastover, but he says he fell in love with the uptown project while working on it.

He says all of The Trust's buyers come from the Charlotte area. They plan to move from large homes in Dilworth, Myers Park, Lake Norman and Carmel Country Club.

Four of the families have children, ranging from babies to adolescents. The others are single or empty nesters. All are planning to occupy the condos, rather than using them as second homes, he says.

Donnelly sold an Internet travel business in New York two years ago. He and his wife chose Charlotte as the location for their Emerson Joseph men's salons and moved here.

He bought the building formerly known as Home Federal Savings and Loan for $6.5 million in January 2007. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its modernistic architecture. Because of the historic designation, he says, The Trust drew immediate interest from buyers.

“It's an amazing address, an amazing old building,” Donnelly says.

Donnelly says his buyers place a premium on their privacy. So he wouldn't divulge their names. But he allowed me to phone the man in his 30s who is buying the condo featured in the showhouse.

Sure, the investment banker says, he worries about money and the possibility of a recession, even in a good business climate like Charlotte's.

But the $1.5 million he'll spend on the condo is “much less an investment than a quality of life issue. It was the uptown living that attracted me.”

The buyer is a bachelor from an urban area in a northern state. He says he values urban living and appreciates that the building is historic.

Recently, Center City Partners, which promotes uptown living, lowered its projections for uptown population growth. Instead of growing from about 10,000 to 21,000 by 2012, it now projects about 15,000 uptown residents by 2012.

That's because the slowing economy has slowed the pace of uptown development. Some condo projects have been pushed back and at least one has been canceled.

But Michael Smith, president of Center City Partners, says the uptown real estate market remains strong, because of “the uniqueness and the limited supply of this product.”

“The Trust is an outstanding example of adaptive reuse with an unmatched address,” Smith adds.

Developer Donnelly says he's “not a Pollyanna” about the economy and knows “there's less urgency among buyers than there was last year.”

But, he says, “You need to look at every project on its own merits.”