Moving.
Whether into a new home, a new job, a new city or state – moving is a major life event. Daunting, for sure, but also invigorating, exhilarating. An opportunity to reflect, reassess, reimagine, dream, improve.
You plant your flag in the new place and lean on the things you carried with you – tangible and intangible, lessons learned, memories, aspirations – to make your next chapter better, wiser, more purposeful than your last.
We are in the midst of that exciting phase now as a Bar family.
In early February, we moved out of the Bar & Foundation Center and into our new home in the historic Addison Building on the corner of East Morehead Street and South McDowell Street. Our new address is 831 East Morehead Street, Charlotte, NC 28202. We are leasing a 3,500-square-foot suite, ideally configured for the needs of our Bar staff. Our space is comfortable and professional; the Classical Revival-style building exudes a certain je ne sai quoi charm; and the location, at once historic and vibrant, sits astride Dilworth and Midtown, across from The Pearl medical innovation district, the soon-to-be home of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine – Charlotte.
In sum, an ideal hub from which to launch our Bar’s momentous next chapter.
Continuing the moving-as-metaphor theme, our physical move coincides with our moving from an “integrated” bar model to a “bifurcated” bar. Effective July 1, the entity now known as the Mecklenburg County Bar will split into two new organizations: the 26th Judicial District Bar (the “mandatory” bar that performs the statutory functions of local bars, to which you must belong) and the Mecklenburg Bar Association (the “voluntary” bar that will carry on the non-statutory functions you most associate with bar organizations, like CLE programming, sections and committees, pro bono, professional networking, bar league sports).
Because membership in the Mecklenburg Bar Association (“MBA”) is voluntary, we’ll have to earn your business, provide compelling reasons for you to join. We’re excited about that, excited about the opportunity to reimagine, dream, improve, excited about making our Bar better, more responsive to our members, more relevant to your law practices and professional lives. We’ve spent the better part of two years getting ready for this moment. You’ll be hearing a lot more from us in the coming months. In the meantime, if you’re looking for information on MBA membership plans and other bifurcation-related updates, please visit the bifurcation page on the Bar’s website: MeckBar.org/Bifurcation.
Our new home may be small (about 1/7 of the size of the Bar & Foundation Center), but “right-sizing” was prudent from both a financial and a strategic standpoint. We realized in recent years that our space needs were changing. The CLE market moved increasingly online. We were hosting fewer and fewer large events and meetings. And then came the pandemic, which upended traditional notions of office space.
The MBA’s mission is to “champion the local.” That is our unique value proposition, the thing that sets us apart from other bar organizations that are statewide or national in scope. We exist to facilitate connections here in the local community, to foster a sense of belonging. One way we aim to do that is to “take the Bar to the Bar.” Our limited space in the new location compels us to get out into the community, to meet you where you are. Section and committee meetings, events, CLEs, social gatherings – we’ll be hosting those at law firms, event spaces, and other locations all across Mecklenburg County. In that sense, our physical footprint is actually growing, not shrinking.
I’ll close with some words of gratitude. Moving is hard work, stressful and unsettling. Our Bar staff, led by Executive Director Leah Campbell, did an amazing job purging and packing up, upfitting and furnishing the new location, all while managing the challenging bifurcation process and otherwise keeping our Bar running on all cylinders. Thank you.
We also had wise counsel from excellent lawyers. LaToya Parker, a real estate partner at Parker Poe, expertly guided us through the lease negotiation process. LaToya also is representing the Foundation in the sale of the Bar & Foundation Center. Danny Merlin, a real estate partner at Alexander Ricks, has also provided significant advice in connection with the building sale. LaToya and Danny graciously provided their legal services on a pro bono basis. Please join me in thanking LaToya and Danny for their outstanding contributions to our Bar.