The City of Fayetteville is in negotiations with a Florida company and other parties to build a long-awaited tower atop the downtown Hay Street parking deck next to Segra Stadium baseball park, a lawyer representing the city said in Cumberland County Superior Court on Monday.
At least one of the parties is Lansing Melbourne Group, also known as LMG, CityView has learned. LMG has offices in Manchester, New Hampshire; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Concord, North Carolina.
The Fayetteville City Council in late February toured two apartment buildings that LMG built near the Atrium Health Ballpark, a Minor League Baseball stadium in Kannapolis, according to an itinerary of the visit. Kannapolis is a town north of Charlotte.
Fayetteville City Manager Doug Hewett on May 23 told WFNC radio host Gilbert Baez that “exciting news” could come this summer about the parking deck and tower. “I’m hopeful that the project will advance in the next few months,” Hewett told CityView later that day.
Negotiations could end lawsuit
A deal with LMG to build an apartment tower or other project on Fayetteville’s Hay Street parking deck could settle an ongoing lawsuit between the city and the parking deck developers who years ago promised the city council that they would build a seven-story building there. These developers also rehabilitated the former and once-decrepit Prince Charles Hotel next door to the parking deck, and in 2019 re-opened it as an apartment building with ground-floor retail space.
The rehabilitated Prince Charles, the construction of Segra Stadium for the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, and construction of the Hay Street parking deck plus a seven-story building on top of it, were all pieces of a major downtown Fayetteville revitalization effort in the late 2010s.
The five-story Hay Street parking deck is capped with a reinforced pad designed to hold the weight of a large building. At 12 stories, the structure was expected to become Fayetteville’s tallest building and offer tenants an exceptional view of Fayetteville Woodpeckers baseball games in Segra Stadium.
The tower was never built.
It was supposed to be finished by Oct. 31, 2024, according to the city’s lawsuit against the Prince Charles development organizations. The defendants are Hay Street Development Pad LLC and PCH Development Co. LLC. The city sued them in July 2024.
The city says the parking deck was never satisfactorily finished (the five-story structure is criticized regularly for its lack of elevators), and it appears that construction never started on the tower.
The original plans were for two buildings on top of the parking garage: A five-story hotel and a seven-story office building.
By early 2022, and following the COVID-19 pandemic, the plans were changed to a seven-story apartment building with 212 units.
With the tower unbuilt, the city in July 2024 sued the developers, alleging breach of contract.
Marston Waldo, a spokesperson for PCH Development, said the firm would decline to comment on the ongoing lawsuit.
Trial delayed to give time for new deal
The trial was scheduled to start on Monday. At the request of Fayetteville attorney J. Scott Flowers, who represents the City of Fayetteville, Superior Court Judge Doug Green postponed the trial to Sept. 22 to give the city and others involved time to try to work out the deal.
Flowers told Green that PCH and Hay Street Development Pad may transfer the rights for the project to a developer from Florida.
“There’s a lot of parties involved all over the country,” Flowers said. He didn’t name LMG or any of the others.
Delaying the trial will give the new development group time to complete its contracting work and due diligence for a new deal, Flowers said.
‘Very nice lofts’
Fayetteville City Council Member and mayoral candidate Mario Benavente was impressed by the apartments that LMG built beside the baseball stadium in Kannapolis.
One of the apartment buildings, Stadium Lofts, overlooks the Kannapolis baseball park just as an apartment building on top of Fayetteville’s Hay Street parking deck would overlook Segra Stadium where the Fayetteville Woodpeckers play.
“They were very, very nice lofts,” Benavente told CityView, offering tenants great views of Kannapolis Cannon Ballers baseball games. “It’s almost like you’ve got box seats,” he said. “That’s how close and sort of adjacent to the ballpark this apartment complex is.”
The other apartment building, called Vida, is about a block away from the Kannapolis baseball park.
“We were there to see what can be done in Fayetteville,” Benavente said. “And certainly, if we were seeing what can be done, we would want to know who did it and if they can do it there successfully, why can’t they do it in Fayetteville successfully? I think that’s very much the line of logic right there.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
Did you find this story useful or interesting? It was made possible by donations from readers like you to the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation so CityView can bring you more news and information like this.
