Business

An International

Gateway The Lake Norman area attracts businesses on a global scale COMPILED FROM STAFF REPORTS

The Lake Norman area is primed for new business development, with much of the recent growth planned for Huntersville. There is currently 4.1 million square feet of speculative space in planning, review or under construction.

Below are a few speculative development projects of note: • NorthCross Commerce Center has two buildings under construction, with the largest being 331,000 square feet and the other being 114,000.

Two more buildings are planned for this site as well. • Bryton Commerce Center has completed three buildings totaling 350,000 square feet with plans for Phase 2, which will include three more. • Selwyn Property Group is planning a speculative building off Alexandriana Road that will be just over 100,000 square feet. • Scannell Properties is planning two buildings in The Park Huntersville that will total 231,000 square feet. • Johnson Development has also started clearing for a Class-A industrial speculative building located in The Park Huntersville, which will total around 150,000 square feet.

Pester Pac Automation, which develops cuttingedge machine concepts from film wrapping and case packing through to palletizing, officially opened a facility in The Park Huntersville. The 23,000-squarefoot space includes a 5.3 million investment and is expected to bring 20 jobs to the area. This activity comes after years of work by Ryan McDaniels, head of Lake Norman Economic Development (LNED) and other local leaders to attempt to spur development. McDaniels’ focus now shifts from eagerly pursuing development to finding tenants to occupy the high volume of space that is coming to Huntersville. His team at LNED has done so by adding more virtual tours of sites, he says.

“It is exciting for us because I know we’ve missed deals because we just simply haven’t had the right product, and now we’re going to have that option.” North Mecklenburg is in a competitive position for international projects due to being located just 20

BRYTON COMMERCE CENTER IN HUNTERSVILLE. minutes from Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The Charlotte airport is ranked among the top 10 busiest airports in the world and is home to the second largest hub for American Airlines. The airport is an international gateway with numerous non-stop services to 175 cities including London, Frankfurt, and Munich.

Charlotte Douglas International Airport also has a 200acre intermodal facility that is strategically positioned creating an intermodal hub linking air, rail, and truck to East Coast seaports. The facility, which is capable of 200,000 lifts annually, transfers containers between trucks and trains, and connects to the intermodal facilities at the Port of Charleston.

With many manufacturers building new facilities in the North Mecklenburg market, there have also been recent expansions. Some of those include Forbo Movement Systems, Reynolds Consumer Products and Saertex Multicom.

The following companies continue to be Lake Norman’s biggest employers, a list which has remained relatively unchanged over the past few years. Ingersoll Rand continues to lead the way with 1,600 employees on its Davidson campus, followed by Davidson College with 750 and MSC (350). McGuire Nuclear Station tops the list for Huntersville at 1,200 employees, followed by Novant Health (690), Metrolina Greenhouses (650), Joe Gibbs Racing (650) and Rubbermaid (400).