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Owner has new plans for Bojangles Coliseum shopping center

The Bojangles Coliseum Shopping Center's new owner said he has new plans for the dilapidated strip center. 

He'll have to convince neighbors it's not just another empty promise.

The center has a new sign out front, but it's also still full of broken glass and empty storefronts.  Inside one of the two remaining stores, Paul Williams has seen plans come and go.

"There's been a number of projects, but they've just never panned out," Williams said.  

A few years ago a previous owner said he planned to give the shopping center a major face-lift, but it never materialized.  This year the entertainment company Topgolf was serious about building a new facility on the property.  Instead, the company now plans to build in southwest Charlotte.  So, current owner, Chris Bitterlin, says he's now looking at demolishing the buildings on the property in favor of a brand-new complex of retail stores.

"It lends itself to a complete redevelopment, " Bitterlin told Eyewitness News,. "That's the direction we're heading.  That's what we're studying."

The success of a Walmart built next door, on what was also an abandoned shopping center, is part of what gives people like City Councilman John Autry confidence this plan will finally come to fruition.

"Any time that you can have some redevelopment happening in east Charlotte, I try to look at that as a good thing," Autry said.   

The new owner says he's now in search for an anchor tenant, a well-recognized business to draw customers inside, and believes he'll find one.

"We're hoping sooner rather than later that we will have the whole picture competed, " Bitterlin said, "and be able to present to the community and the city a plan that everybody will embrace."
 

WSOC

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