Developers promise to restore Charlotte’s legendary Black cultural hub, but the numbers don’t quite add up
Another year, another plan to resurrect the Excelsior Club. This time, developer Shawn Kennedy wants to make the defunct West Charlotte nightspot his “legacy project”—with a little help from taxpayers to the tune of $3 million.
Kennedy, who runs Kennedy Properties & Development alongside his Prosperity Alliance venture, pitched Charlotte City Council’s Jobs and Economic Development Committee this week on an $7.8 million plan to demolish and rebuild the historic club as a near-exact replica. He’s partnered with Tim Sittema and the much larger Crosland Southeast for the project.
The ask is straightforward: $1.5 million from the city, $1.5 million from Mecklenburg County, and the developers will somehow find the remaining $4.8 million through foundations and their own pockets. There’s just one tiny problem—they don’t actually own the building yet.
When Legacy Meets Ledger
Kennedy told councilmembers that “this project doesn’t make sense financially,” which might be the most honest thing said in a Charlotte development presentation this year. The estimated return on investment clocks in under 1%, meaning this is either philanthropy masquerading as business or a very expensive exercise in civic pride.
The Excelsior Club opened in 1944 on Beatties Ford Road as Charlotte’s first private club for Black residents during segregation. Legends like Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong performed there, while locals gathered for fish fries on Tuesdays and “Dirty Thirty” parties on Thursdays. Beyond entertainment, it served as a community and political hub where everyone, from Bill Clinton to local leaders, would gather.
The club shuttered in 2016 and has been slowly rotting ever since, despite multiple revival attempts that have gone exactly nowhere. Kennedy says he was first approached about taking over in 2015 by then-owner civil rights attorney James Ferguson, but the timing wasn’t right. Apparently, nine years of decay has improved the timing.
The Demolition Question
Here’s where things get complicated—and expensive. Sittema says the current structure is beyond saving, plagued by mold, roof holes, and structural problems that make it unsafe. The solution? Tear it down and build a replica, complete with a new rooftop addition.
This approach has gotten preliminary approval from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, which designated the site as a landmark. Apparently, destroying a historic building to build a copy of it counts as preservation in 2025.
Kennedy envisions the new space as a “modern juke joint” featuring healthy food options, live music from local artists, and community programming including forums, farmers markets, and culinary training. The plan also includes a focus on second-chance hiring for people facing employment barriers—a nice touch that adds social impact credibility to the pitch.
The Ownership Puzzle
The financial engineering gets more interesting when you consider that Kennedy and Sittema need to buy the property before any of this can happen. California-based Kenwood Investments has owned the club since 2019, when they purchased it for $1.35 million with help from $250,000 in public funding from the city, county, Foundation for the Carolinas, and Knight Foundation.
Kenwood is now asking $1.7 million for the deteriorated property—a 26% markup on their investment in a building that’s gotten significantly worse over the past six years. That’s some impressive real estate math, even by Charlotte standards.
So the actual project cost breaks down like this: $1.7 million to buy the property, plus $7.8 million to demolish and rebuild it, for a total of $9.5 million. The developers are asking taxpayers to cover nearly one-third of that bill for a project that, by their own admission, makes no financial sense.
Reading the Political Tea Leaves
City council members seemed generally supportive during Tuesday’s presentation, with concerns focused mainly on timeline and economic viability rather than the fundamental wisdom of the investment. In Charlotte’s current political climate, supporting Black cultural preservation projects carries significant political upside, especially with elections coming up.
The county commissioners will hear their pitch on Wednesday, where the reception is likely to be similarly warm. After all, $1.5 million is a rounding error in local government budgets, and the Excelsior Club carries enough cultural weight to make opposition politically costly.
Whether this plan will actually succeed where others have failed remains an open question. The site has seen multiple revival efforts crash and burn over the past decade, each one promising to restore the club’s former glory. The difference this time might be Crosland Southeast’s involvement—they have the resources and experience to actually execute a project of this scope, assuming the financing pieces fall into place.
The Bottom Line
Kennedy’s sincerity about preserving the Excelsior Club’s legacy seems genuine, and his partnership with Crosland suggests this isn’t just another pipe dream. But asking taxpayers to subsidize a project that admits to having terrible financial returns deserves more scrutiny than it’s likely to get.
The real question isn’t whether the Excelsior Club deserves to be preserved—it absolutely does. The question is whether demolishing a historic building to build a replica, funded partly by public money for a project with no reasonable expectation of financial success, represents the best use of $3 million in taxpayer funds.
Charlotte has plenty of cultural preservation needs that don’t require betting on speculative real estate ventures. But in a city that regularly hands out tax incentives to corporate headquarters and luxury developments, $3 million for a community cultural hub doesn’t seem particularly outrageous.
The councilmembers will vote on this eventually, probably after the appropriate amount of political theater about fiscal responsibility and cultural preservation. The smart money says they’ll approve it—after all, nobody wants to be the politician who killed the Excelsior Club’s latest resurrection.
Jack Beckett is a senior writer for The Charlotte Mercury who has consumed more City Council meeting coffee than any human should survive. When he’s not tracking municipal money or decoding development deals, you can find him exploring every corner of Charlotte’s sprawling civic machinery. For all the city’s political intrigue, zoning battles, and budget breakdowns, visit our Politics section. Check out our comprehensive 2025 election coverage and our award-winning series “Poll Dance 2025″—because democracy is basically a very expensive, slow-motion dance-off. Get the full Charlotte story at cltmercury.com or dive into our News section for everything that matters locally. Questions, tips, or just want to argue about municipal bond financing? Hit us up on X.com—or Twitter, or as we affectionately call it, Twix.
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This article, “The Excelsior Club’s Latest Revival: $8 Million Plan Seeks $3 Million in Public Money,” by Jack Beckett is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0.
“The Excelsior Club’s Latest Revival: $8 Million Plan Seeks $3 Million in Public Money”
by Jack Beckett, The Charlotte Mercury (CC BY-ND 4.0)