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January 9, 2007 |
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 BOB
BERTGESWachovia Cultural Facilities Plan By Henry Bostic The man who has been coaxing the Wachovia First Street Cultural Campus from bold idea to emerging reality on Tuesday gave Charlotte Rotarians a brief look at the $1 billion project that will change the face of South Tryon Street and the Center City for decades to come. Speaking like a proud parent, the executive vice president and director of corporate real estate for Wachovia Corporation alluded to the scope and impact of the enormous project when he suggested to Thomas Moore as he was introduced to the club that the appropriate music for him would be The Impossible Dream. The total development, said Bob Bertges, features the 48-story Wachovia office tower, four museums, a 1,150-seat theater, a 350-seat auditorium, 300 luxury condominiums, a graduate school campus, 2,200 below ground parking spaces, as well as large plazas surrounded by retail space. Clemson University graduate Bob Bertges cited a few statistics just to drive home the point about the project's size:
Wachovia, for its part, has guaranteed the building price and will pay any overage if it cost more than anticipated to build what has been laid out. He said Wachovia wanted to build a great, vibrant urban space that the community could be proud of. The project is also about synergy - about the bank and the cultural entities sharing infrastructure to make the most efficient and wise use of taxes. Bertges cited the parking garage and auditorium as examples of commonly used space. Included in the development will be: The Afro American Cultural Center will stand on a sliver of land next to Stonewall St. and across College St. from the Civic Center. It will be 50 feet wide and 400 feet long. It will have 45,000 square feet of space for permanent and visiting gallery space as well as areas for music, theater and other productions. Bechtler Art Museum, with 35,000 square feet of space faces Tryon St. across First St. from the bank building block. The museum will house a 1,200-piece collection of modern and contemporary art assembled by Andreas Bechtler and his family during the past 75 years. Many of the pieces, Bertges said, were gifts from artists who received early support for their work from the Bechtlers. The new Center City home of The Mint Museums will be a five-story, 145,000 square-foot facility that fronts South Tryon at First St. in the same block with the bank. With about 23,000 square feet of permanent collection galleries, the new facility will house the Mint's collection from the Craft + Design museum, which will close, and its contemporary, American and Romare Bearden collections. The Mint will now have the space to attract world class exhibits which it has not been able to do at its current location in Eastover, he said. The 1,150-seat Knight Theater opens onto a plaza next door to the Bechtler and extends to Church. It will be the primary home of the North Carolina Dance Theater and Opera Carolina. It will have the capability of supporting a variety of performances including orchestral music, opera and lectures, smaller productions that will free the N.C. Blumenthal Performing Arts Center for larger engagements. The Wake Forest University Babcock Graduate School of Management, consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world, will share about 55,000 square feet of space with Wachovia's Corporate Investment Bank's Training Facility on the tower's second floor. Behind the office tower will sit a 42-story residential building featuring 300 luxury condominiums that rises behind the newly designed Mint Museum. The Wachovia tower, while not the tallest in the city at 800 feet, will be Charlotte's largest building in terms of overall square footage with 1.5 million. Bertges noted that the building will be environmentally friendly and "gold certified" based on the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) rating system. The tower and adjoining projects are scheduled to be completed in the next three years. Bertges also proudly noted that Wachovia is committed to a 20 percent minority supplier spend for the entire development. Along with many other bank offices, the tower will house the bank's Capital Markets trading floor. He said Wachovia had recently opened new trading floors in Hong Kong, London and New York, but "this will be the granddaddy." It initially will house 750 traders but is designed to handle up to 2,500. "These guys make $500,000 a year. There are no guarantees in the financial world but this drops Wachovia's anchor in Charlotte deep," he said with a smile. Head Table: Ron Kimble, Roger Sarow, Luther Moore, John Lassiter, Katie Tyler, Mike Crum; Invocation: Matt Joyner Visitors & Guests: Edgar Love; Health & Happiness: Don Steger; Song: Greg Walker; Piano: Thomas Moore
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