A banner welcoming new patients hangs from the movie theater's marquee. The building's art-deco facade, once crumbling, sports a facelift and freshly painted shades of putty and brown.

Built as a cinema for blacks, the Belvedere Theater on Rozzelles Ferry Road has been revived and given a new purpose.

Belvedere Family Dentistry opened this fall in the 1950s-era landmark, which had sat empty for nearly two decades and is now part of the Greenway Business Center.

As commercial development remains stalled across the region, local developers hope the investment will spur interest in the fledgling business park in the economically distressed west Charlotte neighborhood.

"It's a huge asset," says Clay Coyle, a developer with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Development Corp., a public-private partnership among the city, county and Charlotte Chamber. "It's much easier talking to people about the business park now that that building is complete."

The CMDC started developing the Greenway Business Center four years ago, buying three old buildings and 30 acres near the intersection of Rozzelles Ferry Road and West Trade Street.

The group got the land ready for development and, working with Mecklenburg County, added a greenway along the adjacent Stewart Creek.

Developers started marketing the property for sale in early 2009, but the recession kicked into gear and demand for commercial space fizzled. The park currently has 11 buildable sites for sale and about 5,000 square feet available for rent.

Charlotte dentist Richard Dest learned of the property while talking with a broker when he was vacationing at the beach.

Dest was skeptical about putting a new dental practice in an old movie theater, but told the broker he'd take a look.

The first thing Dest noticed while driving west from Johnson C. Smith University, he recalls, were the handfuls of renovated bungalows, newly painted Craftsman-style homes, along the road.

"It showed someone cared," says Dest, who opened Belvedere Family Dentistry with a business partner, Michael Reimels. Together, Dest and his partner own or manage 14 dental practices in North Carolina. "I saw how much revitalization was taking place and thought, 'I'd like to be a part of something like this.' "

The theater itself was badly in need of repair, the roof caving in, offering glimpses of the sky.

But Dest was intrigued at the idea of becoming a pioneer in the community and a cornerstone in what developers hope will become a thriving center for employment and recreation, he says. In January, he signed a 10-year building lease .

The business park's site, the former home of the Belvedere Homes public housing complex, is one of five priority business corridors City Council has identified for revitalization.

The CMDC helped pay for the theater's renovations using a $250,000 grant from the city's corridor revitalization fund, a $680,000 loan from Park Sterling Bank, and its own equity.

Dest received a $63,000 grant from the city of Charlotte's Commercial Building Retrofit Program, which provides money for energy-efficient upgrades to help buildings reduce energy use. Dest paid for dental equipment, including X-ray machines.

His wife's firm, Rosa Dest Interior Design, decorated the building using midcentury modern furniture to enhance the building's art deco feel.

Movie posters in the waiting area and examination rooms pay homage to the building's past.

The office employs three people, including one dentist. It has six exam rooms ready and space for five more.

"The Belvedere Theater is a tremendous success story in a corridor that needs one," says Nicole Storey, a community energy conservation coordinator with the city. "This was a building in ruins and one that was near and dear to the hearts of people in the community."

The CMDC almost razed the building.

But a survey of residents showed that most wanted the building preserved.

The weak economy provided additional headwinds for preservation efforts: Because of the weak real estate market and restricted lending by banks, companies these days are more likely to lease space in existing buildings than buy a vacant lot.

"Lack of prosperity is a great preservation tool," says Tom Hanchett, staff historian with the Levine Museum of the New South. "That's why Charleston looks the way it does. For several decades after the Civil War it languished. That's what's happening here, in a smaller way."

Hanchett says the Belvedere Theater is a testament to the area's strong black middle class at the time.

In the 1940s and 1950s, there was a move to build theaters in the suburbs. Around that time, there were theaters on South Boulevard, Central Avenue, Elizabeth Avenue, Providence Road, Beatties Ford Road and Rozzelles Ferry Road, he says.

The theaters on South Boulevard and Central Avenue have been torn down. The Grand Theater, built in 1937 on Beatties Ford Road, has been preserved as a historic landmark. The 1920s-era Visulite Theatre has been converted to a live music club.

The Manor Theatre on Providence Road is the only local theater from that era that continues to show films, Hanchett says.

That two theaters, the Belvedere and the Grand, were located in black neighborhoods showed how robust the black middle class was, Hanchett says.

"Charlotte was a city of opportunity, even though it was restricted opportunity if you were African-American," he says. "People often forget how strong a black middle class there was.

"It's great the folks are investing in Charlotte's older neighborhoods," he says of the CMDC and the dental practice. "That's what makes a city successful."