The city has ordered the 99-year-old Builders Building on West Trade demolished, and a boutique hotel plan may be its last chance

The City of Charlotte has ordered the demolition of the Builders Building at 312 West Trade Street, a 99-year-old landmark at the corner of Pine and Trade that has stood empty for years, WFAE reported on Wednesday, September 24, in its weekly business segment with The Charlotte Ledger. Code enforcement cited bad wiring, floor damage and conditions that make the building a breeding area for rodents or insects.

The building belongs to First Presbyterian Church, whose campus occupies the block at 200 West Trade Street. The congregation bought the block in the 1980s, Axios reported in 2015, and the Builders Building came with it.

What the building is

The Builders Building opened in 1927 as a headquarters for Charlotte’s construction trades, one of the city’s first attempts at a trade association building, according to Axios. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission designated it a historic landmark in 2004, WFAE reported, which gives the commission the power to delay, but not to prevent, demolition.

The church has tried before. In November 2015 it applied to demolish the building, citing severe deterioration of the facade, and offered deed covenants requiring any future development on the land to reflect the building’s architectural character, Axios reported at the time. The landmarks commission imposed a 365-day delay and asked instead for covenants requiring a developer to replicate the facade exactly. The building survived that round. Jesse Hite, the church’s administrator then, said the church wanted to do what was best for the church, the city and the neighborhood.

The hotel that might save it

In May, Onwards Hospitality presented a plan to the landmarks commission to convert the building into a boutique hotel of 20 to 25 rooms, The Charlotte Ledger reported on May 13. Steven Radney led the presentation, and the Ledger described the project as preliminary. Nothing has been filed since, and WFAE noted this week that no deal has been announced.

A demolition order changes the math. If the church cannot or will not bring the building up to code, the order stands and the city can proceed. If a hotel developer takes on the renovation, the code violations become the first line of the construction budget. The Ledger’s reporting suggested the church was open to a sale or lease that kept the building; the demolition order is the deadline that decision now has.

How a landmark gets torn down anyway

Charlotte has, in WFAE’s words this week, a reputation for tearing down old buildings, and the mechanics explain why. A few facts about how the process works:

• Landmark designation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg lets the Historic Landmarks Commission delay a demolition for up to 365 days. It cannot stop one.
• A code enforcement order to demolish runs on a separate track from landmark review; it is about safety, not history.
• An owner can lift a demolition order by fixing the violations, which for a building this age means wiring, structure and pest remediation at once.
• In December 2024 WFAE reported a record number of Charlotte landmarks facing possible demolition at the same time.

The commission’s leverage, then, is time and public pressure, and the building has already used up most of the first.

The church’s 2015 application shows how far apart the two sides have been. First Presbyterian offered covenants requiring any new building to reflect the old one’s character, Axios reported at the time; the landmarks commission wanted the facade replicated exactly. Neither side got what it asked for, and the building sat for another decade while the corner around it filled in with towers. The commission’s 365-day delay has long since expired, which means the only thing between the order and a wrecking crew is the church’s decision.

The block

The Builders Building sits across West Trade from the TradeMark condominium tower and a few blocks from the Gateway district, where the city plans a new transit center and Amtrak station. Land at that corner is worth far more empty than as a 1927 office building that fails inspection, which is the pressure the church has faced for a decade.

First Presbyterian’s own campus is the largest church property left in the core of Uptown, and the congregation has invested in it; its website carries a construction page for its own buildings. The Builders Building is the piece of the block that never fit those plans.

The Ledger’s May report is the only public detail on the hotel. Onwards Hospitality’s Steven Radney presented a preliminary plan for 20 to 25 rooms in an adaptive reuse of the building, and the commission heard it the week of May 11. A boutique hotel of that size in Uptown would be the smallest in the district, in a city whose hotel pipeline runs to 200-room towers like the W planned for 400 South Tryon. Whether a small operator can finance the structural repair a demolition order implies is the question the church and the commission will have to answer this fall.

Why it matters

Uptown Charlotte has very few buildings left from the 1920s, and the ones that remain are the reason the streets around Trade and Tryon look like a city instead of a campus. The Builders Building is one of them, and it has been on the edge of demolition for ten years. This week the city gave that edge a date.

A 20-room hotel would be a small project by Uptown standards. It may be the only one that keeps the corner of Pine and Trade the way it has looked since 1927. We will report the church’s response to the order and any filing from Onwards Hospitality when they come.

Have a tip about this story? Send it to us through our contact form.