Can Camp North End hang onto its vibe?

Plus: More finance jobs for uptown?; Sitting down with Charlotte’s new(ish) chief planner; Sports tenant at Legacy Union; Enderly Park apartments; Rezoning petitions approved

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Welcome back to our weekly look at Charlotte real estate and development news. Charlotte Commercial Real Estate Whispers is where we give the latest developments on Charlotte development — and we have a packed edition for you this week!

Got something to Whisper about? Send me a note at ashley@cltledger.com.

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In today’s edition:

• Camp North End’s new majority owner talks about the property’s future

• West Coast investment firm closes in on Charlotte for expansion

• What Charlotte’s new planning director hopes to achieve in her new(ish) role

• What we know about a new ground-floor retail tenant at Legacy Union

• And a wrap-up of land deals and real estate news from us and other sources

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Camp North End likely to get bigger under new ownership — but some longstanding tenants are wary

Camp North End’s new majority owner is Jamestown out of Atlanta. (Photo courtesy of Jamestown)

Camp North End has a new majority owner after a deal closed last week, with Atlanta-based real estate investment manager Jamestown taking the helm at the 76-acre property north of uptown.

Original Camp North End developer ATCO Properties & Management retains an ownership stake in the property, and the existing on-site team, including Damon Hemmerdinger and Varian Shrum, will join the company as Jamestown employees. Hemmerdinger will serve in an advisory role as non-executive chairman of the joint venture. Shorenstein Properties, which became a capital partner at Camp North End in 2018, also remains an owner in a portion of the property.

It’s unknown how much Jamestown paid for its stake in the property. The transaction has not been recorded in public records. That’s likely because ATCO retained an ownership interest in the deal, so the deal isn’t a “fee simple” transaction that gets recorded in the register of deeds.

Camp North End has radically transformed in the past decade, when ATCO bought the first buildings at the former Rite Aid distribution center (and a Ford Model T factory, an Army quartermaster depot and a missile plant before that) in 2016 (flashback to when I first reported on the deal). In the near decade since, the property has become a lively hub of food and beverage, retail, entertainment, event space and some corporate offices.

But some of the earliest business owners to join the project — who were, in fact, invited to be part of Camp North End to bring culture and people to what had been fenced-in underused warehouses and asphalt parking — are wary about the ownership change.