Local

Why is Uptown parking deck still unfinished?

CHARLOTTE — Next to First Ward Elementary School in uptown is a lesson on timing and real estate investments.

Daniel Levine, who has invested in properties in uptown since 1980, is the largest private landowner in First Ward. His vision for the area led to First Ward Park and UNC Charlotte’s uptown campus.

However, the nearby parking deck Levine started in 2015 sits substantially completed but unfinished and closed to the public. Concrete pillars that would have supported an apartment building wrapping the deck stand in a field, supporting nothing.

Building permits for the development have long expired. North Carolina building codes only require that the site be kept secure.

Levine, who is widely considered a vital partner in the redevelopment of North Tryon Street, remains reluctant to share many details about why the parking deck continues to sit, five years after it was supposed to be completed. But forces swirling around his land holdings — specifically, the likelihood of the Silver Line light-rail line eventually passing beside the parking deck — leave clues to the delay.

Read the full story on CBJ’s website here.

(WATCH BELOW: Settlement reached with 2 companies fined for SouthPark construction site fire)



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