Montford Drive on a Roll
Another prediction for 2014: Charlotte's Montford Drive area will continue to grow as a retail and entertainment spot, and as a place to live, ARA Charlotte director of investment analysis John Heimburger tells us. Over the last five years, Montford Drive has transformed from a row of older restaurants and bars into a branded niche in Charlotte identified by high-quality restaurants and bars catering to the younger working set. For instance: an old doctors' office retrofitted into Bruce Moffitt's latest tapas restaurant, or Park Lanes undergoing a major redo into a hip nightclub/restaurant/bowling alley. (It's the perfect place to go to meet young singles or find out how outdated your clothes are.)
"Montford" now stands alone as its own viable submarket, John says. It provides more connectivity between uses--nightlife, restaurants, shopping, greenway trails--than most of Charlotte's infill submarkets, so it's growth and revitalization will continue as the upcoming generation of recent college grads is lured. (That's the nice thing about college students, they're always graduating.) Investors like it, too. Recently John, along with colleagues Blake Okland, Dean Smith, and Sean Wood repped Cornerstone Real Estate in its sale of the 205-unit Cielo apartment complex for more than $41M to Va.-based Weinstein Properties.
