Mecklenburg plans to buy former Charlotte School of Law building for $16M

Mecklenburg County has a contract to buy the former Charlotte School of Law building off Wilkinson Boulevard, part of a broader plan to sell or redevelop the county-owned Hal Marshall building property uptown and three other key uptown properties.

If the site checks out, the county will pay $16 million for the 100,000-square-foot law school building and 10 surrounding acres, which is less than the $17.5 million value that the structure and property were recently appraised for, said Dennis LaCaria, senior assistant to County Manager Dena Diorio.

The county won’t close on the law school property until August. It has 90 days to conduct inspections and surveys of the building to make sure it is sound, Diorio said Friday.

The seller, MPV Properties of Charlotte, developed the property under the name CSL Suttle Avenue LLC, LaCaria said. Their building has sat empty for two years, after the law school moved to an uptown site.

Mecklenburg plans to move most if not all of the 500 staffers of the county’s Land Use and Environmental Services Agency (LUESA) from Hal Marshall and into the law school building, Diorio said. The building is big enough to hold 600 people, but since LUESA includes the code enforcement division, the county wants to build a spacious customer service center, she said.

“We think this building is a great acquisition for the county,” Diorio said. “We can move the LUESA folks in there, and it will give a lot more room to build a state-of-the-art customer service facility for code enforcement.”

Improving the code enforcement process has been a high priority for Diorio and county commissioners like Pat Cotham and board Chair Trevor Fuller. The county hired a consultant to assess the current process and recommend improvements.

Mecklenburg wants to sell three valuable properties that include the 11-acre Marshall property and the 5-acre Bob Walton Plaza site on Stonewall Street and an acre near BB&T Ballpark in Third Ward. The county also is looking for a developer to recast uptown’s Second Ward into a mixed-use community of market-rate condos, affordable housing, office space, a major park and a hotel.

Buying the law school building is a part of the plan. LaCaria said the county can’t start marketing the Marshall and Walton properties until employees are moved out.

He said the county and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools plan to vacate the Walton building in the next year. Earlier this year, CMS bought a cluster of buildings called Atrium Corporate Center at Pressley Road and Interstate 77 to relocate its headquarters and house employees.

“We can start facilitating some of those redevelopment conversations for the (Marshall and Walton) sites once we have those people relocated,” he said. “The first step is clearing those buildings out.”

This story was originally published December 19, 2014 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Mecklenburg plans to buy former Charlotte School of Law building for $16M ."