by Aaron Burns

CORNELIUS – Langtree at the Lake, Mooresville’s newest residential/commercial project, drew rave reviews at the Lake Norman Chamber of Commerce’s Focus Friday meeting on Oct. 26.

Mooresville Mayor Miles Atkins called it “something stunning for the community … a very exciting project, something Mooresville’s been hearing about for many years.”

RLWest Properties is handling the project’s development. Company president Steve Welly gave a 20-minute address, highlighting the pluses of such a project.

“The whole vision is to create what isn’t there currently,” he said. “Most of our (current) tenants are local and regional-natured. We believe, in our second and third phases that we’ll pick up our national tenants. But it’s the local people who see the value in this site. That’s very exciting to us.”

Langtree at the Lake is an $800 million project, undergoing the first phase of the development. It’s designed to give Mooresville and Iredell County a competitor against Huntersville’s Birkdale Village and Charlotte’s Northlake Mall.

Welly said the entire project figures to be an 8-10-year build-out, but development could lead to a finished product sooner rather than later.

“Or it could take longer. It’s tough to tell,” he said.

The purpose of the project is to serve as a stimulating factor for Iredell County’s economy and be a gateway for more corporate businesses to join the ranks of Lowe’s Home Improvement and Ingersoll-Rand, which have their corporate headquarters in the area.

Lake Norman Regional Economic Development Corporation CEO Jerry Broadway said the project, at Exit 31, will compete with Huntersville and northern Mecklenburg County for businesses and retail stores.

He said Langtree’s area and Huntersville “already do compete for projects, and we’ll continue to do so. Will Langtree at the Lake win some of those? They will.”

The project will also have an economically beneficial trickle-down effect on its neighboring towns.

“We don’t live in a vacuum. We don’t stop at political boundaries,” Broadway said.

“A project like this impacts all of us. I look at the Langtree project as a regional project, an element that creates a positive quality of life for everyone. ”

Atkins agreed.

“To actually see things going vertical now is very exciting,” he said. “I see this as an anchor for bringing the north Mecklenburg towns and south Iredell together. There’s just as much an opportunity for Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson (to profit) as Mooresville, though we’ll be the ones benefitting from the $800 million investment.”

Welly pointed to the proposed 14-story, 350,000-square foot EthoSphere building – which would include a full-service hotel and a 12,000-square foot meeting space for 1,000 people – as the defining part of Langtree at the Lake.

“Most of what you have in Mooresville now are limited-service hotels,” he continued, adding that he was in discussions with 15 different hotels, one of which will become the project’s hotel partner.

One clear objective of the Langtree project is to reduce or eliminate southern Iredell County residents from needing to travel to Charlotte to shop or eat.

“We’re filling a lot of the market needs with this project,” Welly said. “This is a product that will compete with Charlotte.”

Atkins concurred, calling the project a “win-win” for all parties: the developers, future tenants, businesses and residents in surrounding areas.

“You can’t imagine the impact it’s going to have until it’s out of the ground,” he said. “It’s growing and continuing to take shape. We’ll all kind of grow together with it.”

Facts about Langtree at the Lake

• Restaurants will include Wild Wing Café, Brooklyn Boys Pizza and Mona’s Cocktail Lounge

• 300 apartments range from 1,000 to 1,500 square feet

• Condominiums are projected to cost $600,000 to $1.5 million

Visit www.langtreeatthelake.com for more details.