Development Boom
How UNC Charlotte is powering University City’s dramatic growth
Development boom
How UNC Charlotte is powering University City’s dramatic growth
You can measure the breakneck speed of growth in Charlotte’s University City through traditional metrics: Population, new jobs, office and retail developments, and fast-growing student enrollment at the area’s namesake university.
Or, you can look at the connections driving that growth: A light rail line connecting the University directly to Charlotte’s booming uptown skyline. Internships and programs connecting students to University City’s employers, eager to fill jobs. New greenways, sidewalks and other connectors that give students and residents options for getting around without their cars. At the center of it, UNC Charlotte, the university that’s connecting to the community in new and deeper ways each year.
When UNC Charlotte was founded, the school wasn’t even technically within Charlotte city limits. As the University has grown in size and prominence, University City has built up around and alongside it. The surge in development represents a huge change for an area that, not long ago, was largely undeveloped, with fallow fields and wooded lots stretching for miles. Now, with the University front and center leading the charge, University City is poised to continue its growth.
THE RUNDOWN
Great cities are driven by great universities
As the Charlotte region’s only public research institution, UNC Charlotte has helped spur the growth of one of America’s most vibrant cities. Founded 75 years ago, the University is relatively young — a strength that allows it to remain nimble to respond to the ever-evolving needs of its community.
Powering economic development
With more than 75,000 people working within its boundaries, University City is Charlotte’s second-largest employment hub after uptown. It also houses the University Research Park, one of the nation’s largest university research parks, providing research intensive businesses convenient access to UNC Charlotte and its expanding research enterprise. Last year, in the state’s biggest single jobs announcement, health care giant Centene announced its intention to bring 3,200 jobs to University City, with the potential to employ up to 6,000 at its new East Coast headquarters — which means even more development will follow.
Tapping into the talent pipeline
One word defines the boom: Jobs. Major employers such as Centene, TIAA, Electrolux, Duke Energy Customer Service Center and Wells Fargo anchor the University City market, providing a ready source of employment for many of the University’s 8,000 annual graduates. And the University, in turn, has accelerated its outreach efforts, helping employers reach students directly and designing courses of study that prepare students for those jobs.
The dynamic, growing community around UNC Charlotte — in the fifth fastest-growing city in the country — is one of the most exciting things about coming to lead this University. We’ve grown up alongside the businesses, neighborhoods and organizations that make this such an inspiring part of Charlotte. I’m looking forward to continuing to work together to connect this school to the surrounding community, including connecting students to employers, as we work together to weave a new chapter for the University City community and Charlotte, as a whole.
WHAT’S DRIVING THE GROWTH?
Hand-in-hand with Charlotte’s business community, the University has cultivated dynamic partnerships with the city’s largest companies to spark economic development and regional improvement.
Talent. Talent. Talent.
“In terms of preparing students for future careers, that experience has transitioned from transactional to transformational,” said Patrick Madsen, executive director of the University Career Center. “It’s about talent pipeline development. We’re the candidate engine for the entire region. You have a candidate pool that’s not only graduating, but staying in Charlotte to work.”
Patrick Madsen (top) and Mark Spindler (bottom).
About 80% of UNC Charlotte graduates remain in the region, Madsen said. Many programs, like the Risk Management and Insurance Program at the Belk College of Business, directly prepare them for careers with major University City employers. The Career Center is also working with businesses and organizations to provide flexible work experience options, like short-term “gig-ternships,” to enable students with work and other obligations to have opportunities for gaining real-world experience.
Rather than hosting job fairs and waiting for employers and students to find the other, Madsen’s office is helping employers recast their jobs to better reach students where they are. That might involve, for example, advising an insurer to demonstrate how it is a huge data analytics firm to capture the attention of students from the College of Computing and Informatics.
All About That (Knowledge) Base
Mark Spindler, interim director for the Office of Industry and Government Partnerships (OIGP) leads the office that’s often considered the University’s gateway for University/business partnerships.
“Informing and connecting companies with the right workforce talent is a hallmark of our mission,” said Spindler.
“It is critical to building meaningful, collaborative research and economic development partnerships with regional, national and global industries.”
Working closely with the University Career Center and the University’s seven colleges, OIGP actively assists companies by promoting and establishing tailored internship programs to meet their operational needs, enriching the intellectual development of the student — which often leads to post-graduate employment.
If You Build It…
Recognizing the need to support the region’s entrepreneurial development capability, UNC Charlotte built the state-of-the-art PORTAL facility, a 120,000 square-foot building designed to serve as an incubation and innovation center for both established and developing companies. PORTAL represents an intentional investment by the University to promote economic advancement through collaboration with UNC Charlotte’s exceptional entrepreneurial development resources, elite faculty and considerable student talent.
PORTAL has proven fruitful for facilitating many direct partnerships between employers and the University. Allstate Insurance Company, one of the many businesses partnering with the University, leased operational space within PORTAL and has engaged in a robust internship program designed, not only to assist in its current operations, but to provide first-hand training and education to UNC Charlotte students for future employment within its enterprise.
These partnerships prove mutually beneficial. The University is able to provide real-world training opportunities while industry partners inform faculty and its future employees on the current and emerging challenges, needs and requirements of the industrial base.
RECENT KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN UNIVERSITY CITY
What you’re seeing is the result of intentional planning that’s been done for the last few years. What you’re not seeing yet is in the pipeline now.
WHAT’S NEXT
With nine Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Charlotte, one of the world’s busiest international airports and roughly 120 people moving to the region every day, this dramatic growth won’t halt anytime soon.
Experts within UNC Charlotte’s School of Architecture, part of The College of Arts + Architecture, are lending their knowledge to help imagine a future University City.
“Suburban sprawl versus urban density. That’s our real challenge,” said Deb Ryan, professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UNC Charlotte and former chair of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Planning Commission. “We struggle with a sort of suburban mentality.”
Bikeways before Highways
The area around UNC Charlotte is densifying, with greater emphasis on mixed-use developments and less on single-use office and retail developments that are surrounded by parking. At the same time, movement between certain parts of the city without a car presents a challenge, and traffic on some thoroughfares is increasing.
Ryan said a focus on pedestrian infrastructure, bicycle paths and greenways as well as reconfiguring existing roads to be more friendly to people who aren’t in cars, will be key to the area’s future.
“We need to rethink the roads in University City first as places for people to be rather than places for cars to go fast,” said Ryan, who, along with her colleagues, teaches classes that encourage students to reimagine urban space and its use. “The original sin is autocentric mobility.”
A Greener Pasture
According to urban planners, a feature that University City lacks, but needs to continue smart growth is a significant “urban center,” a non-commercial gathering place that draws people to the area similar to Romare Bearden Park and First Ward Park in uptown Charlotte. In fact, Mecklenburg County recently identified University City as one of the county’s largest zones without 10-minute access to a park.
“We need a significant urban park as an anchor,” said Ryan.
One often-used phrase in the development world is “live-work-play,” shorthand for projects that offer mixed uses like apartments, offices and restaurants. For areas centered around higher education institutions, developers often add “learn.” Heater said University City has long been great at the “work” and “learn” parts of that equation, and is now filling in the “live” and “play” parts.
“We have remarkable access to talent,” she said. “For so long, the core of University City has been ‘work’ and ‘learn’. But we are quickly catching up with ‘live’ and ‘play.’”
From pastures to a home for Fortune 500 companies in a couple of generations: The growth of University City is a story that echoes Charlotte’s overall boom. Now, with the University as an anchor and a growing awareness of the need for greater connectivity, new ways to move around and a growing urban fabric, University City is poised for the next decades of growth to come.