Vanguard Pays $117M for Charlotte Office Development

A Charlotte office campus that was slated to become Centene’s East Coast headquarters has changed hands.

Pennsylvania-based investment giant Vanguard Group purchased the 700,000-square-foot campus, at 2405 Governor Hunt Road in University Research Park, for $117 million, the Charlotte Business Journal reported. That’s about $167 per square foot.

Centene, a company that provides healthcare products and services, still owns about 50 acres of undeveloped land across Governor Hunt Road.

JLL brokers represented Vanguard in the sale, while Cushman & Wakefield represented Centene.

Vanguard will consolidate its Charlotte operations and house roughly 2,400 employees in the building. It will relocate its employees from various offices in the city, including the Water Ridge Office Park near Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

Vanguard’s decision reflects the flight-to-quality trend that’s emerged in light of the remote-work movement. Companies are flocking to modern, amenity-filled properties to foster in-person collaboration in response to a radical shift in the office sector.

The campus, slated to open next year, will feature dedicated collaboration spaces, a conference center, cafeteria, outdoor walking areas, electric vehicle charging stations and a fitness center.

Vanguard’s move will reduce office vacancy from 24 percent to 18 percent in the University submarket, said Chuck McShane, CoStar’s director of market analytics for the Carolinas. That puts the area closer to the citywide average of 14 percent, according to CoStar data.

“This is the biggest office space takedown since before the pandemic … It’s a landmark office move,” McShane told the outlet. “I think it certainly shows that major companies like Vanguard are interested in consolidating here and willing to place longer-term bets on the Charlotte market.”

The Centene campus was set to become the largest economic development in Charlotte’s history when it was announced in summer 2020. The Missouri-based company had planned to invest $1 billion to build out more than 130 acres, but it scrapped its move in August 2022, when the first phase of the campus was already under construction, primarily because of remote-work trends and leadership changes, the outlet reported.

—Quinn Donoghue