More demolition and redevelopment is coming soon along the path of the Blue Line

Crews are getting ready to start demolition on an industrial building at 530 East Sugar Creek Road, the latest step in an ambitious plan to overhaul the land along the Blue Line light rail extension.

The site, currently occupied by a single-story warehouse, is across Sugar Creek from The Shed, a pop-up music venue owned by Flywheel Group. Demolition on 530 East Sugar Creek is set to start in the next two weeks, carried out by RCI Demolition.

But don’t expect to see major changes immediately after. Flywheel Group CEO Tony Kuhn said that the site, which is near a planned Blue Line station, will eventually be home to a mixed-use development. It’s not clear how long that will take, however. The site is up for rezoning this month at Charlotte City Council.

“Our ambition is it becomes almost like a town center for the Sugar Creek station,” Kuhn said. The area around it is mostly industrial, with businesses such as warehouses and a concrete plant. “We haven’t figured out the exact mix. We know it’s going to have retail, office and residential, comparatively kind of heavier on the retail and office than has been developed on the Blue Line extension so far.”

“We really want this to be an arts district,” he said.

The site is one of several owned by Kuhn and a development partnership around the Blue Line extension in the NoDa area. Closer to the 36th Street station, Flywheel Group recently won approval for several sites to be rezoned from industrial to mixed-use development.

Flywheel Group has termed that the Greenway District, extending nearly a mile. Kuhn said his company is still in talks with the city about extending Philemon Street and connecting it through the site to make development viable.

“Right now, there’s no connection,” he said. Although Kuhn said he has agreements from several developers to start work on those sites once the infrastructure is complete, and design work has started, he said it’s too soon to announce specific projects.

“We do have projects identified,” he said. The Blue Line extension is set to open this spring, linking uptown to UNC Charlotte.

This story was originally published November 14, 2017 at 7:35 AM with the headline "More demolition and redevelopment is coming soon along the path of the Blue Line."