One of Charlotte’s most challenged office markets is about to see a big change in its fortunes. The University City area, where vacancy rates have risen over the last four years to reach a high of 22.8%, is on the cusp of welcoming a major corporate hub.

Pennsylvania-based The Vanguard Group’s move into a vacant, 700,000-square-foot office campus next year will drop University’s vacancy rate to about 16%, the lowest it’s been since 2021, according to CoStar, an industry data analysis firm. Vanguard plans to move 2,400 of its Charlotte-area employees to that location.

Brokers and analysts expect it will be a transformative event — for the office market as well as the retail and multifamily sectors and the overall housing market.

Vanguard acquired the sprawling campus off Governor Hunt Road, originally built to be the East Coast headquarters for Missouri-based Centene Corp., in April for $117 million. The company declined to comment for this story.

Sagar Rathie, managing director at Crescent Communities, said Vanguard’s move will not only prompt a significant decrease in office vacancy but also signal its commitment to the submarket to other office users. The combination is certain to draw interest from new tenants, Rathie said…

 

Keith Stanley, president and CEO of University City Partners, said the area’s already strong employee base will only be made stronger once Vanguard’s workers are spending time there inside and outside the office. Stanley said the submarket has the second-largest employee base in the Charlotte metro area, behind uptown.

Stanley said University City Partners is using that to its advantage by connecting small businesses to its Fortune 1000 companies. He said the organization is in contact with at least 20 large-scale companies in the submarket and is compiling a database of small, local businesses.

“The value-add is understanding where there is opportunity to bring in the services and amenities these larger companies have to run their businesses and keep their employees,” he said. “(The database) allows us to go to larger anchor businesses and show them companies that could potentially support what they do.”

Stanley said Vanguard’s move into the area also reinforces University City Partners’ efforts to bring in similar business types.

“Their decision really solidifies the direction I want to focus on, which is bringing similar business to University Research Park, including prototype manufacturing, (research and development) and innovation tech, and we think we have an opportunity to do that,” he said. “We sit along a corridor, starting with Eli Lilly north of us and going down to The Pearl, where there’s an opportunity to have alignment with innovation and technology…”

 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION VIA CHARLOTTE BUSINESS JOURNAL.