The time Trump almost built Charlotte’s tallest skyscraper

Big picture: Our skyline would look much different today if Trump’s attempt to build upscale condos, high-end shops, offices and a five-star hotel in Uptown hadn’t fallen through, in part, due to the recession.

• Today, the site at the corner of Tryon and Stonewall is a construction zone for another tower: the 26-story Ally Charlotte Center building, which includes offices, retail and a public plaza.

In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, “crane-crazy” Charlotte was booming with at least 20 high-rise residential projects underway in center city. The one that garnered the most intrigue, and the most chatter around the dinner table, was Trump Charlotte.

The proposal included two multi-dimensional, modernistic buildings — the taller one with condos and a five-star hotel, and the other with offices and retail.

When veteran Observer reporter Doug Smith first heard about the potential two-building skyscraper, it was just a rumor.

• At the time, President Donald Trump was in his sixth season of “The Apprentice” and in the final stage of construction on high-rise hotels in Las Vegas, Chicago, and Waikiki, Hawaii.
• He had expressed interest in running for president, but was a year away from making baseless birther claims against then-president Barack Obama. The claims launched him further into the political arena.

Some speculated one of Trump Charlotte’s towers would be as tall as 80 or 90 stories. Other days, Smith heard the number was closer to 60. Architect Rugel Chiriboga, then of Little Diversified, told me the final number before the project was put on an indefinite pause was 72 stories.

• Chiriboga says it wasn’t about competing with Charlotte’s other skyscrapers. Rather, he says, it was about building something that was “complementary” to the city’s burgeoning skyline.
• Still, in all the plans, the height never dipped below 60 stories.

“Would a Trump tower finally make us a world-class city?” Wrote an anonymous Observer reader in the newspaper’s feedback section after Smith broke the news in March 2007.

Many local business leaders agreed then that yes, a Trump-branded project would lift Charlotte’s status. But privately, contractors told Smith they feared the Trump organization’s reputation when it came to payment follow-through.

• Smith told me he remembers contractors calling and pleading with him: “Stop writing about it.”
• But Smith didn’t, of course. City leaders reiterated what a big deal the project was: “It’s a very serious effort,” Tom Flynn, then-economic development director for the city, told Smith in May 2007. “It’s not just a flash in a pan.”

The “Donald,” as Smith would frequently write, wasn’t actually leading the Trump Charlotte push. It was his kids: Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric, all in their 20s at the time.

“We tend to do things on a fairly grand scale,” Don Jr. told Smith while at Quail Hollow Club in 2007. “We tend to move quickly. The next few months will tell us how fast or how slow.”

In the months that followed, the project unraveled. The contract to buy the 2.5 acres in Uptown lapsed in late 2007, and although the Trump children expressed interest in making the project happen elsewhere in center city, nothing came to fruition.

“It wasn’t an illusion, but it was maybe a little bit of a dream that people had about it. That this could all happen in Charlotte,” Smith says now.

Smith retired in 2009, three years before the Trump name came back to the Charlotte area with the organization’s purchase of a Moorseville golf club.

• Chiriboga, the architect, is now with Odell and says designing the Trump Charlotte building that never was ended up opening a few doors for him. He’s now the lead architect behind Queen’s Park, Charlotte’s so-called “central park.” Go deeper.

Bottom line: Trump Charlotte was touted as a symbol of Charlotte’s status as a “world-class” city, something residents could be proud of. If the building had gone up, would Charlotte — a city which barely agreed to host the RNC and voted 67% to 32% for President-elect Biden — be as proud of it today?

Go deeper into the last few months of the Trump presidency with Axios’ “Off the Rails” series by political correspondent Jonathan Swan.