Council panel picks a developer for Scaleybark

I've been in Charlotte long enough to know that you should never, ever count Crosland out of any city deal until the final buzzer. For decades developer John Crosland Jr. was the city's preeminent master of getting what he wanted out of elected officials. He's retired now, and others run the company he and his father, John Sr., built. The company is still doing suburban subdivisions but has done more urban-oriented and mixed-use projects (Birkdale Village, Alpha Mills renovation). Now it's going for transit-oriented development.

Fast-forward to Monday's City Council committee meeting, where the Economic Development and Planning Committee (hereafter ED&P) was briefed on the three development teams seeking to build a transit-oriented development (hereafter called T.O.D.) at the Scaleybark station. (Note to you who don't read all the fine print inside the Observer: Yes, all three original development proposals withered. But all three development teams submitted new proposals.)

David Furman of Boulevard Centro retooled what was formerly known as the Bank of America proposal.

Crosland, which had dropped its St. Louis-based affiliate McCormack Baron & Salazar, offered a retooled proposal.

So did Scaleybark Partners, a coalition that includes Pappas Properties (Phillips Place, the Midtown development, etc.), GreenHawk Partners of Raleigh, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, Shook Kelley design and something called Citiventure Associates of Denver, which is run by Marilee Utter who's been to Charlotte several times to give talks on transit-oriented development.

The committee unanimously recommended ---- Scaleybark Partners.

The staff had recommended against Boulevard Centro -- the only team to guarantee a parking deck -- because it sought a loan from the city. There's no money now for a loan, said Tom Flynn of the city's Economic Development office.

Both the Crosland and Scaleybark Partners proposals include affordable housing -- 90 units from Crosland (with a commitment to start 30-50 of them in 2008 regardless of whether they have in hand some tax credits to build them) and 80 units for Scaleybark Partners.

Both guarantee parking for the light rail station. Neither guarantees a parking deck (preferable for T.O.D. but more expensive). Both said they'll build one if market conditions are right, i.e. if they can get enough money from developing land that would otherwise be under a surface parking lot to make it worth the extra expense.

Neither offered a site design. Scaleybark said it would build open space -- i.e. a park -- before this November and do some landscaping and streetscape improvements by the end of 2008.

Neither offers a guarantee for a new library, though both say they'd like to try to build one.

The city would net a few hundred thousand dollars more from the Crosland proposal. But the council members on ED&P (John Lassiter, Nancy Carter, Andy Dulin, Don Lochman and James Mitchell) seemed to prefer several things about Scaleybark Partners:

--The development team has remained the same.

--Citiventure has T.O.D. experience. (Crosland said its planners would also have experience, but its development team isn't fully formed yet.)

--They liked Scaleybark's willingness to build the open space first, so the station area looks more inviting.

--They're familiar with the Housing Partnership, a local nonprofit with a strong record of building affordable housing.

--And a key point, mentioned by Carter: Crosland owns a big chunk of land across South Boulevard and intends to redevelop it. There's value in having different developers doing projects near each other, so you don't have a big chunk of your city looking exactly alike. She's right, though it's a point of design likely to be lost on a lot of people.

Here's a link to a Powerpoint presentation made to council on May 14 that has some of the key information. Here's a link to Monday's presentation. (Be forewarned that our online guru notes many of you may not have a viewer that can see it.)

The full council still has to make its recommendation, probably May 29. The memorandum of understanding would go to council July 11, and a development agreement would come in July or August.