Early 1900s corner store in Belmont neighborhood to get $1M-plus makeover

BELMONT, N.C. — A 119-year-old building at a prime corner in Charlotte’s Belmont neighborhood has been boarded up for a long time. But a recently formed local commercial real estate firm will, in the coming months, spend upwards of $1 million restoring it for new uses.

6 Summit Capital last week acquired 1125 Belmont Ave., at the corner of Belmont Avenue and Pegram Street, and a 0.2-acre lot adjacent to it for $900,000, according to Mecklenburg County real estate records. The deal was an off-market transaction.

The roughly 6,000-square-foot building dates back to 1902, when it opened as the Red Front Department Store. It sold “everything from a postage stamp to a house and lot,” says an old advertisement for the store when it opened. It served as a retail outlet for nearby mill workers but was also a community center of sorts, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission report about the building.

It’s the only surviving two-story, pre-World War II commercial building in Belmont, the commission says.

Read more here about the site’s history — and what’s planned for its future.

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