- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- Just ahead on "Carolina Impact".

- Could Charlotte's empty office towers help solve the city's housing shortage?

I'm Jeff Sonier, we'll take a closer look at turning workspace into living space.

- Plus part two of a story that's tied to desegregation, football, and two men who share the same last name.

And we learn how a local charter school, once on the brink of closing turn things around.

"Carolina Impact" starts right now.

(upbeat music) Good evening.

Thanks so much for joining us, I'm Amy Burkett.

Uptown Charlotte isn't quite as busy as it used to be.

The old nine to five hustle and bustle isn't quite the same since COVID and Uptown isn't growing as fast as it used to either.

"Carolina Impact's" Jeff Sonier and videographer Max Arnall show us what's next for some of those tall office towers on our skyline that are now mostly empty.

- Yeah, uptown Charlotte is definitely different now.

Lots of uptown office workers working from home now.

Lots of companies rethinking and shrinking how much office space they really need, but different could be better if that vacant office space becomes tomorrow's living space.

(upbeat music) The Jefferson First Union building was the tallest office tower in the Carolinas when it opened in 1971, 32 stories high.

It even had a swanky restaurant with a view up on the 30th floor.

(upbeat music) Today that same 30th floor is filled with empty cubicles and cabinets.

And while the building now known as Two Wells Fargo is still pretty impressive from the outside, well there's nobody on all those floors looking back down at you anymore, at least not yet.

When you first walked into this building, what did you think?

- It's got good bones.

(laughing) - [Jeff] Cam Barradale sounds like that guy from "This Old House" checking out a fixer upper.

- Because it's all about being able to lay out residential units.

- [Jeff] But he sees this vacant office building as 32 floors of opportunity.

- Scored at 90%.

It's one of the highest scoring buildings in Charlotte, and it's one of the highest scoring buildings in our analysis.

- [Jeff] A space and a place where Charlotte can create something new with a view.

- It could be a completely unique building within Charlotte as a residential offering.

- [Jeff] Barradale is the Charlotte Studio director for Gensler, a design and architecture firm that's looking at 1200 possible office conversion projects all over the country with the makeover plan for Two Wells Fargo getting a top grade nationwide for potential success.

- There's a lot of vacancies in our cities.

We want to make our cities vibrant again, as vibrant as they can be.

- [Jeff] Barradale explains that making vacant old office buildings vibrant again means re-looking at the big spaces that made them vibrant in the first place place when they first opened.

- We've got an incredible space downstairs, this atrium that could be rethought as a food hall, creative working space, right?

Somebody's gonna come along and figure out how to make that a city living room, flowing out onto this amazing plaza.

- [Jeff] But sometimes it's also the little things in an office makeover that make a big difference.

You know, like these 1970s office windows.

So the windows were part of the draw here.

- Yeah, I mean, they're great.

If you look at 'em, you just know they're great.

It's just a better setup for a residential application.

To create operable windows so you could open them, get some fresh air into your units or even potentially put balconies in these units.

And so this building's footprint is great.

The scale of the building's great.

Its location in the city is great.

(upbeat music) - So this gives you the opportunity to take what's really been a flagship piece of property in Charlotte's history and redevelop it and reenvision it as something else and breathe new life into it.

- [Jeff] Pat Gildea is vice chairman of CBRE Charlotte, the commercial real estate giant that's listing Two Wells Fargo for sale.

And here's the makeover marketing pitch.

If you are a buyer, yeah, interest rates are higher, but look at the value versus building something new.

- Well, it's a bit of a perfect storm right now.

We've had a situation in Charlotte specifically where several large users gave back significant chunks of space in or around the same time.

Everybody in Charlotte knows these buildings, has visited these buildings for one reason or another, and they're now in the dead center of uptown.

(soft music) - I think you're gonna see some real creativity today and hopefully it's something that lights some fires.

- [Jeff] That's why Charlotte Center City Partners is hosting this design competition, including the plan for Two Wells Fargo and five other makeovers of what Center City is calling, not vacant office space, but vintage office space.

- It's today a 800,000 square foot seventies era office building that we are looking to convert into 448 residential for rent units and about 60,000 square feet of ground floor retail.

- [Jeff] And here's one of the Charlotte designs that won the competition.

A proposal to recycle the old Duke Energy headquarters across the street from Bank of America Stadium into a new project known as Brooklyn and Church.

- To tear it down alone was gonna be, what, $40 million?

So really it was gonna cost more to tear it down than it would've been to buy the building itself.

- [Jeff] Project designer Welch Lyles adds that a makeover means they can deliver those apartments 20% cheaper than a new apartment building, while also saving 10 months of construction time, a total of two years or less start to finish.

But if you're looking for an Uptown Office conversion that's already finished, (warm music) well check out these condos at the old Home Federal Savings and loan building on South Tryon Street.

Now it's known as The Trust.

Six years ago, this particular condo sold for more than $2 million.

Not exactly affordable housing, but it does show what's possible here in uptown with the right old building and the right new design.

How does a building like this help solve the housing shortage in Charlotte?

- Well, first of all, a building like this could provide 300 to 400 units centrally located downtown.

So it's making a more vibrant downtown, but also you're not having to bring as much parking potentially because of its location.

You're not having to sprawl out and build more housing along the edges or in the suburbs.

Most of the best candidates are along Tryon Street or at Trade and Tryon.

And so if we could figure out a way to convert those great candidates right in our core, it'd make an incredible main street for us.

If you've got a great core, everything else is gonna benefit from it.

(upbeat music) - Also, here's one more idea that came from that Uptown Design competition.

How about turning empty office towers into college and university residence halls?

Another way to bring more people uptown by providing more housing uptown, Amy?

- Thank you so much Jeff.

If you'd like more information on the conversion of Uptown Office space to living space and other users, check out our website, pbscharlotte.org.

We'll link you to all six plans that were part of the vintage office design competition at Charlotte Center City Partners, including before and after images of those familiar uptown office buildings.

Well, keeping things in Charlotte, we hear a lot about low performing public schools.

Tonight we'll take an in-depth look at the success of a charter school, once on the verge of being shut down, now seeing tremendous academic results.

"Carolina Impact's" Dara Khaalid and videographer John Branscum Take us inside Sugar Creek Charter School to learn how they turned things around for their minority students.

- [Teacher] Be.

- [Students] Be.

- [Teacher] Go.

- [Students] Go.

- [Teacher] Do do do.

- [Students] Do do do.

- Be.

- Be.

♪ Go - [Dara] You'll immediately feel the energy inside Kareem Benson's character education class at Sugar Creek Charter School.

- Fancy, give me the fancy one.

- [Dara] From his sing song phrases.

- I love how we raised thine Khalil.

- [Dara] Animated gestures to his upbeat personality.

- 'Cause everything we're gonna start talking about today, we eventually are going to put it into action.

- [Dara] Every student looks engaged.

- I'm just an energetic person, I don't like to be bored, you know what I'm saying?

So growing up I was always the talker in the classroom.

So of course bring that to education.

Alright, anybody else?

I love about y'all please, I'm getting hungry.

- [Dara] To outsiders, it may seem like they're just having a good time with students outta their seats and eagerly shouting back.

But there are powerful lessons being taught.

- With care development it comes from, of course you hear about showing responsibility, showing respect, but I take it a step further.

I teach you how to control yourself.

Sometimes you have to think, step back, you have a problem.

Just take a second, have a moment, then come back and be able to express yourself positively.

All right, cool, cool.

- [Dara] Classes like this.

- Should be written down someplace.

- [Dara] Are a portion of what superintendent Cheryl Turner says sets their school apart.

- We have such a focused mission.

It's very easy for us to be able to target the things that our kids need.

- [Dara] Data from the North Carolina Department of Instruction shows that last school year, 49.5% of African American students were grade level proficient in reading compared to CMS at 17.4%.

For Hispanic students at Sugar Creek, 39.8% were grade level proficient in reading compared to CMS at 15.2%.

This is an accomplishment Turner can be proud of because in the mid two thousands they almost had to close their doors due to poor test scores.

- Our first five years the state talked about closing us because we were low performing.

- [Dara] She tells me school officials were given five months to improve, which required her to go into immediate action.

- There were a lot of people here who just didn't need to be in front of kids, so was turning that over.

- [Dara] Turner says as they fired teachers who were ineffective, they replaced them with those who were committed to the school's mission of eradicating generational poverty in the lives of students by providing a rigorous education.

However, she didn't stop there.

She created a plan for effective instruction, implemented a weekly coaching model for teachers, and visited multiple successful charter schools to learn what they were doing that worked and implemented those changes at Sugar Creek.

- There's a charter school in Henderson called Henderson Collegiate.

They've been the highest performing minority charter school in the state.

And I just kept saying, "Okay, what in the world are you doing that you're able to pull this off at 90% proficiency?"

- [Dara] Sugar Creek officials tell us they have nearly 1500 students, 81.86% are African American, 15.04% are Hispanic, and the remaining are other races.

Turner says it was vital to study charter schools where the demographics are the same.

- The overwhelming majority of our students are from low income homes, but we currently have a caseload of 65 kids who are homeless.

- [Dara] The superintendent tells us she's up for the challenge.

- Our kids were not born defective.

They can learn just like anybody else.

And if your expectation is that they will learn, they will.

- [Dara] We asked 11th grader Mason Riley about his experience at the school.

- One of the ways that they helped me learn better is by, especially in math, if I need help, which usually I do, my teacher will personally sit down one-on-one and help me personally.

- [Dara] Riley has been there since he was in kindergarten.

- [Riley] I like the family aspect of Sugar Creek.

The teachers, they care so much about me compared to what my friends say about their own public schools.

- Alright, table manners.

Who remembers what table manners is?

- [Dara] That difference between Sugar Creek and other public schools is something teacher Kareem Benson noticed as well.

He pulled his own son out of public school and brought him over to Sugar Creek.

- I had to bring him here because I love what Sugar Creek stands for.

I love the whatever it takes approach that we have.

And I'm a teacher here and most times you see parents work at a school where their son and daughter's not there, not me.

I saw all this greatness and I was like, my son needs to be a part of this.

- Benson says, after switching his son, he saw significant improvements in how he did academically.

- What made you pick Dallas?

The Sugar Creek has helped me get out my shell.

'cause I was always just very to myself.

I didn't wanna be outta my shell.

Being an all A student, that's all I wanted to see.

I had tunnel vision towards being all As.

- [Dara] As a senior with her focus on higher education, Mikalah Adair says Sugar Creek's College Career and Readiness program has equipped her for the future.

She's received over 20 acceptance letters.

- We have specific days where we actually just focused on applications, talking through with your counselor what occupation you wanna do, and they just help me like, don't limit myself.

- That's one of the things.

- [Dara] As a parent of four Sugar Creek students, Amber Martin tells us it's what teachers have done outside the classroom for she and her husband that means the most.

- My mom just had a stroke.

A couple of the teachers that know me, they actually check on me.

That actually means a lot.

- [Dara] From teacher involvement to rebounding from poor test scores, school officials and parents we spoke to say they're proud to see where Sugar Creek is today.

For "Carolina Impact", I'm Dara Khaalid.

- Thanks so much, Dara.

Due to the economic circumstances the majority of the students face the school offers financial courses, a campus washer and dryer, and other resources to help families.

Finally, tonight, I've got a little history lesson for you.

You probably didn't know the process of knife making dates back to prehistoric times.

One area man's chance encounter with blacksmithing while reading his Bible led to extensive research and a forged journey into metalwork.

Videographer Marcellus Jones takes us to Albemarle for the story.

(hammer pounding) (warm music) - I make mostly kitchen knives and hunting knives, functional stuff, high performance knives.

That way when you grab for one, you don't just put it, put it back in the drawer.

Something you can actually use and take care of and hopefully it'll outlast you and your family.

(machine whirring) The inspiration behind the name Doberman Forge was my dog at the time.

He had a lot of traits, he was fearless and he protected his family.

And I kind of wanted to fold all those into my work.

So a functional piece of art, hopefully, that had those traits as well.

(flame bursting) (flame blowing) (hammer pounding) My interest in blacksmithing really arose one night and I had a rough day at work.

I had been reading the Bible and it was one of those quotes that had, it was a metaphor for blacksmithing, I wanted to context clues to understand the verse that I was reading.

And long story short, the sun started coming up.

I've been researching about blacksmithing for that long, and it turned into a two or three year long daily fascination where I was reading about blacksmithing at some level.

And then I told my grandpa, I think I'm gonna build a forge.

He's like, cool, go into my house and look under the stairwell.

He said, you could have it.

And I went and looked and it was, found out that it was my grandmother's dad's anvil.

And he had passed 40 years before I was born, but he was a master blacksmith.

(machine pounding) And one of the ways I learned bladesmithing was an online forum group, there's a bunch of similar guys like me and we'll just share information.

One day the producers from "Forged in Fire" had posted a banner on there inviting and encouraging people to congratulations come on the show.

So I just responded and I went on the show and luckily I won.

- Gabe, congratulations, you are the "Forged in Fire" champion and will be receiving a check for $10,000, good job.

- The night my show aired and I was showed favorably in winning, I had several thousands of dollars worth of orders that night.

I had just launched my website and with all those orders I said, "Look, I'm just gonna quit all my jobs and we're gonna try this for a little while."

And I've been doing that since 2017 and it still pays my mortgage.

Knife making is a problem solving thing.

So you always have a problem.

And there's way more than one solution and there's about 500 different stages.

So even though it's the same thing, it's spread out over a longer timeframe.

(machine whirring) Every knife based on the complexity, can take anywhere from five hours to 100 hours.

You take a little bit of care of it and it takes care of you.

- Thanks Marcellus.

I'm always learning new things about amazing people throughout our region.

If you have an interesting story idea like this one, please email us the details to stories@wtvi.org.

Well, that's all the time we have this evening.

I wanna thank our friends at the Laurels and the Havens at Carolina Place for coming to visit us tonight and being part of our studio.

Thanks so much to each of you for watching.

We always appreciate your time and look forward to seeing you back here again next time on "Carolina Impact".

Good night, my friends.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(warm music)