Low-key Carroll has high-rise hopes for downtown's rebirth
This week's column.
The yellow construction elevator that climbs the face of the new Center Pointe tower creaks and groans as it rises high above the trees and fountains of Center City Park.
It jerks defiantly when it gets to the top, as if it wants to keep going. Then it quivers before finally settling down.
So does your stomach.
You stand there, still shaking and looking for something to grab as Roy Carroll II grins from underneath his hard hat, cool and sure-footed.
You wouldn’t know that the gleaming, black 17-story reclamation project is Carroll’s first high-rise development ever unless he told you.
He seems perfectly at home at Center Pointe, which soon will be his home, at least the top two floors.
This was not supposed to be doable. Conventional wisdom was that it was too risky and expensive. Better to blow it up than try to save what once had been the old Wachovia tower.
But Carroll, 45, had help from Jefferson Pilot, now Lincoln Financial, which sold him the building cheap, and from the city and county governments, which offered incentives that made the tower’s makeover into shops, offices and high-end condos financially feasible. Now more than 50 percent of the units are sold, and “we’re still selling,” Carroll said Thursday.
On a clear day, the 14th floor of the building offers a faint view of the Winston-Salem skyline and a bird’s-eye vista of NewBridge Bank Park (only from this height, the team that plays there really does look like Grasshoppers).
Slightly to the north, you also can see 4.5 acres of bare land that once was part of the old North State Chevrolet dealership.
Now it belongs to Roy Carroll, too.
Carroll has the land under contract and plans to develop it for “high-end” residences that either will be sold or rented. The details are still sketchy, Carroll said, but he does know for sure what he won’t do there. “We are not envisioning student housing,” he said.
Carroll was referring to an out-of-town developer who’d previously had the land under contract for student apartments. No offense to students or student housing, but Carroll sees the site as a more important piece of the downtown puzzle than that. “It’s well-positioned,” he said. “It’s convenient to downtown and to shopping at Friendly and Battleground.”
Carroll said the project won’t be as ambitious as a previous vision for the land, the $60 million Bellemeade Village, which would have included a boutique hotel, shops and residences — and which would have required taxpayer assistance for significant street modifications and a parking deck.
Carroll said his company instead is planning a more “low-impact” development.
But Center Pointe and Bellemeade are only part of Carroll’s holdings in the center city. Scarcely a block away he also owns 1.4 acres directly across the street from NewBridge Bank Park that once housed county tax department offices.
“We have about 10 different plans to develop it as a mid- to high-rise development,” he said.
Then there are 5 more acres further north along Battleground Avenue, near Hill Street, that he also plans to develop. “We really would like to find a tenant to build to suit,” he said. “We really don’t want to sell it. We’d rather build something on it.”
If Milton Kern is the mayor of South Elm Street, Carroll might be bucking for that office on North Elm.
Ideally, Carroll said he wants his company always to have at least one ongoing project downtown. “We’re very bullish on downtown,” he said. “And we will continue to be.”
Even in a tight economy, Carroll said, he’s convinced of downtown’s long-term promise as a housing market. “This end of town is poised to be the next big growth area of Greensboro,” he said.
He doesn’t like to make too big a deal about those projects, he said, because it’s easy to raise people’s hopes, and even easier to disappoint them when grand plans fall through.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t think big. He smiled and looked a little uncomfortable when asked about drawings he allegedly possesses of an even taller tower he’d love to build beside Center Pointe some day.
Yes, it exists, he conceded, sounding slightly embarrassed.
And maybe one day it might be more than an artist’s creation.
He is quick to give credit to people like downtown builder/developer Milton Kern and to the coalition of nonprofits, Action Greensboro, that jump-started downtown’s rebirth. “Milton definitely was a pioneer,” Carroll said. “He took chances and put investors’ money and his own money at risk.”
Carroll also still seems grounded in the values Roy Carroll Sr., who died in January, instilled in him decades ago, when they hammered nails and hung drywall together in the fledgling family home construction outfit.
Even during a recent tour, as he notes the huge, recessed balcony in his penthouse overlooking the downtown ballpark, he seems more than a little self-conscious about the sheer grandness of it all.
But there’s no such hesitance when he discusses the “fun” he’s having with his downtown ventures.
For most of us, downtown’s revival is a spectator sport, in which we can safely cheer from the sidelines while other people take big chances with their money.
Still, more local developers are seeing not only the potential for profits there, but for creating a place to build community and bring people together. Kern, John Kavanagh, Chester Brown III. The list is growing.
It wasn’t always that way. Local companies remained on the sidelines as a firm from Charlotte developed the award-winning Southside village in partnership with the city. South Elm Street also came back on the strength of those kinds of risks. So can the other part of downtown that largely remains dark and quiet even as South Elm rocks.
When asked if he might wind up gobbling half of the center city, piece by piece, Carroll said, a little bit sheepishly, “It’s kinda heading that way.”