By Collin Huguley – Staff Writer, Charlotte Business Journal

Northwood Investors hired John Barton in 2018 with a key mission: make its $1 billion investment in Ballantyne Corporate Park pay off.

Barton has spent the past six years working with the Northwood Office team here to meticulously piece together what has become a transformative project not just for Ballantyne but for all of south Charlotte.

The process involved securing approval in 2020 for one of the most extensive and complicated rezonings in the city’s history for the 450-acre business park, then maintaining momentum through the pandemic and finally executing the broad vision for Ballantyne Reimagined.

The team’s plans are constantly evolving as Northwood reevaluates market demand.

Barton said: “We’re really trying to look at things in a way that contemplates, ‘What could this be? If you had no budget, what would it be?’ Obviously, we have budgets. Then you say, ‘OK, what is feasible?’ But if you’re not considering what it could be to just be truly amazing without limitations, it’s hard to get to a great product that you can actually deliver.”

The result: The Bowl at Ballantyne delivered this year, giving the area a main street corridor that features a 14,000-square-foot location of The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, shops, restaurants, green space and an amphitheater as well as an apartment tower. Northwood also landed Charlotte’s first Wegmans grocery store for Ballantyne — the ultimate prize in a retail developer’s portfolio. This on top of a previously delivered, 321,000-square-foot office building.

All of that comes with the promise of much more on the horizon.

For his work leading the transformation of Ballantyne from staid business park to a dynamic, forward-looking anchor for the region’s growth, the Charlotte Business Journal named Barton its 2024 Business Person of the Year.

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