After community outcry, family has a new plan for their 2 Lake Norman mansions
After a year of public backlash, a family has a new plan for their two Lake Norman mansions, a family member told The Charlotte Observer on Monday.
The Griffin family pulled their rezoning request for a 6,000-square-foot events venue called Sunset Cove last week, the town said in a social media post Friday.
The Cornelius Planning Board was scheduled to hold a public hearing on the request Monday night, but the item was removed from the agenda.
The family is now working on a proposal for a “lower-volume” country club for their waterfront property on Nantz Road, Mike Griffin told the Observer. Not one with a golf course, however, he said.
For a monthly fee, people could enjoy such games as bridge and Mahjong, and take Pilates, yoga and other exercise classes in the 6,000-square-foot center, Griffin said.
Large events, such as weddings, would be limited to 12 a year, he said. The venue also would host four annual gatherings by local non-profit organizations, Griffin said.
The closest neighbors would be the Griffins, who plan three more mansions on the road for their family, Mike Griffin said. They would move from the existing two, which are planned for overnight stays by guests at events.
By right, five to eight homes could have been built on the property they own, which would have generated more traffic than the family’s original events center proposal, Mike Griffin said.
“We plan to live there for life,” he said about the mansions the family is building on Nantz Road. He said the family has lived on the road for decades.
The idea of “a kind of third space for the community, one “for casual gatherings,” was recommended by speakers at public meetings about the family’s original plan, he said.
Griffin said unwarranted fears about crowds and constant traffic spread about the family’s original plan, but “it was never going to be seven days” a week of large events throughout the year, he said.
“Cater to high-end clientele”
The 6,000-square-foot events center would be located between the family’s two existing mansions. A maximum 125 parking spaces would be built, Mike Griffin said, compared with the previous latest proposal that called for 150 spaces.
The family’s two existing mansions overlook the lake on 8.6 acres in the 18300 block of Nantz Road, which dead-ends at the lake. The road is off West Catawba Avenue and Interstate 77 exit 28.
Mike Griffin and brother Larry Griffin Jr. revealed their Sunset Cove plans at a Cornelius Board of Commissioners meeting in April 2025.
Larry Griffin Jr. and his wife, Virginia, own one of the homes. His father, Larry Griffin Sr., and mother, Sheree, own the other mansion, Mecklenburg County public tax records show.
The proposed events venue “really is just to preserve this land for generations of our families,” Mike Griffin said last year. “It’s our homestead preservation plan.”
The Griffin properties border the forested southern end of county-owned Ramsey Creek Park and lie across a cove from the peninsula that includes the park’s public swimming beach.
A mansion owned and torn down by NBA great Michael Jordan, presumably to build a bigger home, also is across the cove from the Griffin mansions.
Neighbors opposed previous plan
At least year’s town board meeting, Cornelius commissioners heard from five neighbors concerned about the proposal in their residential community.
“We’ve had people spin around on our lawn,” Nantz Road resident Ken Miller said, referring to beach goers. “The police have done a helluva job keeping things straight, but they can’t keep up with it.”
Neighbors worried the venue would mean more congestion and wrecks and lower property values.
Family business ventures
The family’s Charlotte-based Griffin Brothers Cos. started in 1961 when Larry Griffin Sr. opened the first Griffin Brothers Tire Sales store, according to the company website.
The company later expanded into commercial and residential real estate development. Griffin Bros. developed such properties as the Harris-Teeter-anchored Waterside Crossing mixed-use community at N.C. 16 and N.C. 73 in eastern Lincoln County near Lake Norman and Mosaic Village in Charlotte, which includes housing for students at Johnson C. Smith University.
Griffin Bros. also acquired and developed landfills in the Carolinas.