Camp North End is becoming a reality — and just signed its first anchor tenant
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A New York company has big plans for a massive tract of land north of Uptown.
Developer ATCO bought 72 acres of real estate late last year. They’ve been fairly quiet so far about what they’re calling “Camp North End” — but now they’re starting to outline their plan to anchor Charlotte’s burgeoning North End.
The local group held a community meeting Monday night to start explaining to neighbors what’s in store. They also announced the first anchor tenant that will set up shop there.
What is Camp North End?
This is the name given to the massive redevelopment project planned in Charlotte’s North End. While it’s not clear what all will be built on the site, the developers have a wide-ranging vision. In rezoning documents, ATCO says the following things could end up there:
- Retail
- Food/beverage
- Creative office space
- Light industrial (brewery?)
- Creative lab space
- Community space
- Entertainment venues
- Film studio
- Educational building
- Hotel
- Apartments
Where exactly is it going to be?
Off Statesville Avenue and Graham Street.
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It’s just a stone’s throw from Uptown.
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What’s there right now?
Primarily older industrial buildings. About half the site is the former distribution facility for Rite Aid Corp., and there’s the Hercules Industrial Park.
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So they’re going to tear everything down and build new fancy things, right?
Nope. Site plans call for adaptive reuse of many of the buildings. I can see why. There are some really cool older buildings here that would lend themselves to creative office space or some other trendy use.
What’s coming first?
Camp North End leaders just announced Monday night that Junior Achievement of Central Carolinas will be the first anchor tenant. If you went to school around here, you probably know what it is: JA is a nonprofit that brings financial and business literacy courses to kids from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Their capstone event is a trip to BizTown in Uptown Charlotte. It’s a whole little city where students get to try out different jobs and learn about how the businesses work.
What JA wants to do at Camp North End is to build another massive facility to host another BizTown that’s twice the size of the existing one, and a new Finance Park for high school students. Right now all of the Finance Park curricula on personal finance is happening online.
“We have a very big vision for what we want to do,” Junior Achievement CEO Sarah Cherne told the Agenda. “What we’re really trying to do is be a transformational force.”