By Mark Price
msprice@charlotteobserver.com

Just a little over 10 years after moving into an imposing 20,000-square-foot office built as its "first real home," the Urban League of Central Carolinas is putting its uptown Charlotte headquarters up for sale, due to the recession and a shortage of expected public support.

The office building, near Gateway Village at Fifth and Cedar streets, is costing the agency about $12,500 a month. The Urban League also is dealing with 40 percent cut from United Way and a drop in donor dollars that add up to a combined $200,000.

Meanwhile, the Urban League's work force, education and homeowner programs are helping twice as many people as they did in 2007, prompting a space shortage, says Patrick Graham, who took the helm of the agency in 2007.

It hasn't escaped him that the site represents one of the few remaining minority-owned properties in the gentrified Gateway Village area, but he says the league has no choice.

"You can't think about this with your heart, you have to use your head," Graham says. "It's a decision based on what's best for the organization and our customers. We exist to help people increase their skills to get a better job. If we can't serve them, how are we relevant?"

The property has been on the market only days at a price of $3.5 million. Graham's dream is that it will sell within the year, allowing the league to move to a larger, but less expensive spot near Johnson C. Smith University, or along South Boulevard, which is close to bus lines and the light rail.

Experts say the price is fair for uptown office space, but the building hits the market at a time when property is "under inflated." Predictions are that the price will have to come down.

"Right now, we have supply exceeding demand," said real estate broker David Dorsch, who tracks the Charlotte office market at Colliers Pinkard.

"The ray of hope is that, if you look at the fundamentals of downtown, there's good reason to be optimistic about the market by, say, the end of 2011, early 2012."

The league currently owes about $1.8 million on the site, which Graham says wasn't supposed to be the case. There was apparently a plan in 1999 that the community would step up and help pay off the building in three years, he says, "but for some reason it didn't go that way."

Observer stories from 1998 report a capital campaign to raise $2.8 million toward the cost of construction. At least $1.3 million was raised by that September.

"When I came in, I looked at the data and said: 'Why are we paying so much of an expense for the building?'" says Graham. "I know we need the space for participants, but it's becoming hard with the recent cuts to maintain it."

This budget year, the agency dipped $180,000 out of its emergency reserves to keep from cutting programs that now serve about 5,000 each year. Still, it had to cut the staff by four positions and delay the start of some programs.

To keep from making more cuts, the league is stepping up money-raising efforts, including the kickoff of its spring campaign weeks earlier than usual, on Feb. 16.

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