The Land Swap
The 2010 Vision Plan recommended the creation of an urban park in Third Ward, the reconfiguration of Marshall Park, and the development of a new “urban village” in Second Ward. In addition to achieving these plan objectives, the “Land Swap” also created a process to make land available in Third Ward to build a new baseball stadium in the heart of Uptown for the AAA Charlotte Knights. When built, this new sports venue and the team will provide hours of affordable, family-friendly fun and entertainment in the heart of the city for Charlotte’s citizens.
The “Land Swap” is an exchange of public and private property in Uptown Charlotte that creates two major urban parks, a AAA Uptown Baseball Park as well as Brooklyn Village in Second Ward which includes affordable and workforce housing along with shops and offices. It provides an opportunity for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to relocate their headquarters to a new, more efficient office building.
This proposal has the potential to stimulate a wave of development totaling more than $750-million dollars in Uptown creating a robust tax revenue stream of $12.2 million dollars every year. That money goes directly into the public coffers to be used for police, schools, sidewalks and roads. The new sales tax revenue produced by this project tops $2.4 million a year. This process is a great example of what we can achieve when our elected bodies, city, county and school staffs and private sectors work together to create a city changing project.
