Charlotte rezoning petitions and Mecklenburg permits: the two records that name a project before it is built

Charlotte publishes two records that matter and withholds two that would. The rezoning petition is public from the day it is filed and runs most of a year ahead of construction. The Mecklenburg County permit carries the owner and the cost, and on about a third of permits a phone. The loan is not readable (the Register of Deeds publishes no daily index) and there is no start notice in North Carolina. Here is how to read the two you have and how to fill the gap with the parcel roll.

The rezoning petition

Charlotte's zoning is set by the Unified Development Ordinance, and a change to a parcel's district is a rezoning petition to the City Council. The Planning, Design and Development Department lists each petition with a number (the year and a sequence), the petitioner, the agent, the acreage, the location and the current and requested districts. It posts the staff analysis, the site plan where the request is conditional, and the hearing dates as they are set.

The process, from the public calendar: the petition is filed and a community meeting is held. The City Council holds a public hearing, the Zoning Committee of the Planning Commission makes a recommendation, and the council votes. Six to nine months is normal. Groundbreak reads the petition list daily and matches each to its parcels and to a project. The City Council feed carried 103 petitions and agenda items in the last 90 days. See the glossary on zoning cases.

The petition is the earliest filed record of a Charlotte project, and the request tells you what is coming. A change to a transit-oriented district or a conditional mixed-use district on several acres is a tower or a multifamily block; the conditional site plan attached to it shows the massing. The petitioner is the owner or the developer's entity, and the agent is a land-use attorney or a planning consultant, which is the firm that has been hired so far.

The Mecklenburg permit

Building permits for the City of Charlotte and the county's towns (Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill, Cornelius, Davidson, Pineville) are issued by Mecklenburg County Code Enforcement, and the county publishes them with the owner, the declared construction cost, the contractor and the address, and on about a third of permits a phone number. Groundbreak reads the feed daily; the last 90 days carried about 1,700 permits. See building permits.

Where there is a phone, it is the owner's or the applicant's as entered on the application. The cost is the applicant's declared figure. On a commercial permit that is the lead for the trades: the GC is named, the owner is reachable, and the cost tells you how big.

The permit feed covers the towns as well as the city, which matters in Charlotte: Huntersville and Cornelius along the lake and Matthews and Mint Hill to the east build a share of the metro's suburban commercial, and they are on the same county permit.

The parcel roll fills the gap

The Mecklenburg Register of Deeds records every deed and deed of trust in the county, and publishes no index feed Groundbreak can read daily. So Charlotte has no loan layer: a deed of trust that would name the construction lender is not in the data. North Carolina also records no notice of commencement, so there is no start signal before the permit. See deed of trust and notice of commencement for what the other markets have.

What Mecklenburg does publish, and Groundbreak reads daily, is the county's parcel roll: about 400,000 parcels, each with the owner of record and its last sale date and price, from the county's own assessment data. A Charlotte sale appears when the roll changes, with the price, which is more than Austin or Atlanta get. See owner of record.

The reading, in order:

1. An owner change on the roll, with the price. The land sold. The buyer is on the parcel.
2. A rezoning petition on that parcel. The owner has hired an agent and decided to build. The design team follows.
3. The county permit. Owner, cost, contractor, and a phone on some. The job is real and the GC is named.
4. Trade permits, from the same county system, as the job sequences.

A parcel at step 2 with no step 3 is a project where the GC and every trade are open, and where the lender, whoever it is, has not been recorded anywhere you can read.

Who this is for, and who it is not

If you are a lender, an insurer or a surety who needs to know who is financing Charlotte construction, this data will not tell you. The deeds of trust are recorded and not readable as a feed, and no product Groundbreak knows of publishes a daily Mecklenburg lender index. Say so to anyone who sells you one.

If you follow a few petitions, the city's rezoning page is free and current. The records become worth having as a database when you sell into Charlotte commercial jobs and want the petition, the permit with its cost, the owner of record and the last sale price on one project. For that reader, the Charlotte development database carries all of it, with the phones on the Pro plan. The largest permits this month and most active contractors tables are free.