CHARLOTTE-Considered somewhat unconventional in real estate circles, local developer Jim Gross is telling the city he's the right man to take on the old convention center.

CHARLOTTE-With a new technology provider in its corner, the locally based financial services firm will expedite data to customers completing a loan application.

CHARLOTTE- The Crossings at Nations Ford will have a 119,894-sf office-warehouse structure and a 78,736-sf flex space building on a 30-acre site on Interstate 485 at Nations Ford Road.

GREENSBORO, NC-Renovation of the Kress Building on South Elm Street is under way and could represent an example of what much of Downtown could become.

CHARLOTTE-For the past 10 years, Gateway Center's office workers have relied on a shuttle bus to get from the center to the center city. Now the bank and co-developer Cousins Properties of Atlanta are incorporating the projects in a pedestrian-friendly, 25-acre community.

RALEIGH, NC-California investor Herbert Kendall paid $17.4 million for the 120,000-sf, one-year-old Lucent Technologies Building on North Carolina State University's centennial campus. Duke-Weeks built the structure last year for $100 per sf.

CHARLOTTE-The locally-based retailer will be relocating an undetermined number of the 300 workers to its new $9.2-million, 367,000-sf automated center in Blythewood, SC, near Columbia, SC, 200 miles south of Downtown Charlotte.

CHARLOTTE-When the BF Goodrich Co. moved its headquarters to Charlotte last year, all the executives except the CEO were moved into cookie-cutter offices of just over 200 sf each, with almost identical furnishings.