Courting the ACC: HQ move to Charlotte hinged on business community, other assets

CHARLOTTE — Last winter, when executives and board members from the Atlantic Coast Conference and consultant Newmark made their second headquarters scouting trip to Charlotte, they dined with a group of business and civic leaders at Quail Hollow Club.

Site selection for the meeting with the site selectors and the ACC was quite intentional. Newmark and the ACC had already listed greater access to prospective corporate sponsors among their key criteria for determining the conference’s future headquarters. At that point, the field had been narrowed to three cities: Charlotte; Greensboro, the league’s home since 1953; and Orlando, Florida.

The PGA Tour’s Presidents Cup was then on the horizon at Quail Hollow, and the golf event had already broken all previous sponsorship and hospitality sales records months before being played. The community leaders who fueled that record sponsorship haul stood as ideal ambassadors for Charlotte’s sales pitch. Among them was Geoff Gray, who headed Quail Hollow’s Presidents Cup sales committee.

“The whole connection was to the Presidents Cup and to the ACC’s future sponsorship opportunities, elevating their brand, and how we do things in Charlotte,” Tracy Dodson, assistant city manager in charge of economic development, told CBJ. “There were a lot of people there that were instrumental around the Presidents Cup.”

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CBJ talked with multiple people involved in bringing the ACC’s headquarters to Charlotte. Read the full story here.

VIDEO: ‘A transformational day’: ACC to relocate league office from Greensboro to Charlotte

‘A transformational day’: ACC to relocate league office from Greensboro to Charlotte

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