News

N. Meck's heavy hitter
by J. Lee Howard
Charlotte Business Journal
April 25, 2003

As a baseball star at Charlotte Country Day School, Charles Knox Jr. struck out only once in 111 trips to the plate during his senior year.

Twenty-one years later, Knox is still wielding a hefty bat, scoring deal after deal in northern Mecklenburg County’s burgeoning real estate market.

He has a lot on his to-do list.” Says Chip Scholz, chairman of the Lake Norman Chamber of Commerce and owner of Scholz & Associates, a leadership consulting firm. “He’s finding his passions, and he’s going after them.”

From its modest start 12 years ago, The Knox Group Inc.’s brokerage volume has grown to $3 million to $5 million per year, with its companion development business making deals valued at $1 million to $4 million annually.

And Knox has been at the forefront of some of north Meck’s highest-profile attempts at pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use development.

For example, as an agent for the town of Cornelius, he assembled the land for Cornelius Town Center, a mixed-use development that includes a new town hall, police station, grocery store and small shops.

Knox – whose cell phone seems to ring every 30 seconds- was pivotal in getting the 10-acre property secured, helping resolve legal issues with the previous land owner and coordinating talks with the development team, a joint venture of The McAdams Co. and JDH Development.

Knox is particularly skillful when it comes to New Urbanism projects, says Bob Race, Cornelius town manager. New Urbanism seeks a blend of uses such as retail, office and residential in a nostalgic mix that’s the antithesis of suburban sprawl.

While Knox is a believer in pedestrian-friendly development, he says the approach can be taken too far.

at an industrial development be put in the back,” he says. “I’m an advocate of neotraditionalism, but you can get carried away.”

Knox got involved in drafting Cornelius’ zoning code as far back as 1995, when the town first began crafting its rules for new development.

He is a participating member of the community in which he lives,” Race says. He not only brought in the real estate expertise, but he’s done development, as well.

“He kind of knew what we wanted even before we knew it.

Among his other business interests, Knox is also a partner with Steve McLeod of the McLeod Corp. in the North 77 Business Park, a flex development on 129 acres off N.C. Highway 115 at Bailey Road.

His latest project is a 30,000-square –foot speculative development in two buildings called Davidson @ South Main, in the heart of downtown Davidson.

A Family Tradition
Of course, it isn’t unusual for someone named Knox to play a leadership role in Charlotte or its neighboring towns to the north.

The 38-year-old Knox Group president is the nephew of three area former mayors: Eddie Knox of Charlotte, Joe Knox of Mooresville and the late Russell Knox of Davidson. And his father, Charles Sr., is a Huntersville lawyer.

Given that background, it seemed only natural that Knox chose political science as his major at Davidson College in the mid-1980s. He wrote his senior thesis on why certain families turn to lives of public service.

As a senior, he took an internship in internal affairs with the U.S. State Department, working with a committee that monitored and approved U.S. exports to Eastern bloc countries.

“I was thinking of going into the foreign service, and I even applied to the CIA,” he recalls. He quickly learned that the agency’s cloak-and-dagger image is mostly a myth, and he dropped the idea. “I realized I probably would have been chained to a desk analyzing data in some basement at CIA headquarters.”

That didn’t satisfy his wanderlust, however. “I grew up in Charlotte and went to school at Davidson,” Knox says. “It was like I could never get out of Mecklenburg County.”

At the time, Knox family friends Tom and Dorothy McMillan had a son working in commercial real estate in San Diego. So Knox called the son, Jim McMillan, interviewed and was hired in 1986 as the 11the employee of commercial real estate firm OliverMcMillan.In California’s then-booming economy, OliverMcMillan took off. By 1989, it had 55 employees and $250 million in projects.

“We did this,” Knox says, swooping his hand in an upward arc. “And then we did this,” he ads, his hand swooping straight back down.

The precipitous slump, coupled with a twinge of homesickness, led Knox to return home.

“San Diego was a great place to live, but it was not a great place to live forever,” he says.

Coming Home
Equipped with the hard lessons learned in California and some seed money from his father, Knox started his local firm in 1991. One of his first projects was a Keebler cookie warehouse.

He has since built a solid reputation, particularly within the tight-knot Lake Norman area.

“Charles is good at what he does, but he wants to be better,” Scholz says. “Charles is extremely centered, but he’s also introspective. He’s not done wit himself yet.”

Knox’s mix of serious-minded drive and laid back humor is evident in his diverse interests.

His favorite historical figure is Leonardo da Vinci.
“The way his mind worked was amazing,” Knox says.

His favorite movie? Caddyshack.

One of Knox’s chief characteristics is an ability to talk easily with almost anyone, says Alex Whisenant, president of Alan Tate Insurance Services and a high school baseball teammate.

“If I needed something, I could call him up and he would do everything he could to help me,” Whisenant says. “He should run for mayor of Charlotte someday.”

That may or may not be in the cards, Knox says. He acknowledges being approached to run for a seat on the Cornelius Town Board.

That will have to wait. For now, his personal and professional commitments simply don’t allow time for politics. “And I’ve got a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old,” Knox says. “Running for office is definitely something I want to do, but the timing isn’t right. I don’t want to spread myself too thin. But if you live in a community, you owe it to that community to help make it a better place.”