In the heart of Charlotte, North Carolina, The Pearl - the city's first innovation district - is charting a new path for innovation while honoring a site that has long been part of local history. Located on the former site of Brooklyn - a once-thriving Black neighborhood largely displaced by urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s - the district treats that legacy as central to its identity. Developed through a partnership among Atrium Health, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Wexford Science & Technology, Mecklenburg County, and the City of Charlotte, The Pearl brings education, healthcare, research, technology, public spaces, hospitality, residential uses, and community gathering into one integrated urban environment.

As part of a larger purpose, The Pearl establishes Charlotte as a national hub for medical education, life sciences, research, and discovery while creating a district that feels connected to the surrounding city. Anchored by Charlotte's first four-year medical school - Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Charlotte - and the North American headquarters of the leading global surgical training institute IRCAD (Research Institute Against Digestive Cancer), the development is already helping position the city for long-term growth in healthcare innovation. The project aims to support economic development, create new job opportunities, attract investment, and foster collaboration among students, researchers, healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, residents, and visitors. Its urban footprint positions the district as an extension of Uptown rather than a closed campus, with public spaces and multimodal connections intended to invite daily use.

Collaboration From Day One
Kimley-Horn's role began before The Pearl had fully taken shape. In 2018, Atrium Health - part of Advocate Health, the third-largest health system in the United States - engaged the firm to evaluate potential sites across Charlotte for a transformative innovation district and medical school, and the team helped identify the untapped potential of a property Atrium Health already owned. That early involvement gave the team a front-end understanding of the site's constraints, opportunities, infrastructure needs, and long-term development potential.

 
As the lead consultant, Kimley-Horn provided and coordinated a broad scope that included site selection support, due diligence, master planning, rezoning and entitlement support, civil engineering, roadway design, landscape architecture, structural engineering, traffic engineering, utility coordination, flood modeling, stormwater design, parking studies, transportation demand management, and project management. The firm's work extended across nearly every aspect of the project, outside of the vertical buildings themselves. Because the assignment touched so many systems, the team approached the work as a connected ecosystem - much like the innovation district itself - rather than a collection of individual improvements. That perspective allowed infrastructure, landscape, mobility, and entitlement decisions to reinforce one another instead of competing for space, resources, or time.

The design process required close coordination among the client, tenants, designers, and public agencies. Recurring meetings with the Charlotte Department of Transportation (CDOT) and concurrent reviews by CDOT, North Carolina DOT, Mecklenburg County, and Charlotte Water helped keep infrastructure, mobility, permitting, and public-realm decisions aligned. This level of coordination was essential; the project needed to advance through complex regulatory pathways while preserving flexibility for future phases of district growth. The process also required Kimley-Horn's team to balance near-term construction requirements with a master plan designed to evolve through multiple buildings and infrastructure phases.

The Purposeful Walk
One of the clearest expressions of the district's design intent is The Purposeful Walk - a pedestrian-oriented corridor that connects Pearl Street Park to the McDowell Street underpass. Rather than functioning only as a route through the site, the walk becomes a layered storytelling experience with educational signage, public art, interpretive features, and community narratives inspired by interviews and memories shared by former Brooklyn residents. Through this approach, the landscape supports one of the project's central goals: creating a place that honors the past while inviting people into the future of the district.

Along The Purposeful Walk, visitors encounter moments designed for reflection, learning, and interaction. Educational displays share stories of the Brooklyn neighborhood, sculptural elements and public art create points of discovery, and playful features such as integrated hopscotch encourage multigenerational engagement. These details make the public realm feel active and approachable while reinforcing that the district's history is meant to be experienced in everyday movement, not separated from it.

A Place For Everyone
Midway through the corridor, a vertical plaza rises between the research and education buildings of The Pearl, creating a symbolic transition between historical reflection and future innovation. Sculptures, quotations, layered storytelling, terraced seating, planting, lighting, and a 14-foot-tall-by-40-foot-long water wall shape the space into a civic destination for gathering and contemplation. Nearby multimodal improvements - including road realignments, new roadway construction, traffic signal upgrades, utility coordination, and Charlotte's first behind-the-curb cycle tracks - strengthen connectivity and support a more walkable urban district. Together, these elements make the landscape work at multiple scales: a memorial, a mobility corridor, a civic room, and a framework for continued development.

History and Hardscape
The Pearl also required the team to solve significant technical and cultural challenges. One of the most important was balancing a forward-looking innovation district with the responsibility to acknowledge a community displaced by urban renewal. The team addressed this challenge by activating a Community Advisory Council (CAC) made up of current community members and former members of Brooklyn. The CAC provided historical context and represented the community's voice in making this a project "for the people, by the people."

The engineering challenges were equally complex. A major culvert that serves a significant portion of Uptown Charlotte had to be reworked into dual 10-by-6-foot storm culverts and relocated beneath the new plaza, requiring the team to work with Duke Energy for more than five years to relocate and bury major overhead transmission infrastructure. Kimley-Horn's multidisciplinary structure allowed these constraints to be coordinated with roadway design, utilities, grading, landscape architecture, agency review, construction sequencing, and future development needs. By addressing these issues through one coordinated delivery effort, the team helped transform constraints into organizing features that support the district's public spaces and long-term function.

A Path Forward
Today, The Pearl stands as a catalyst for Charlotte's next chapter. The district is expected to generate an estimated $1.2 billion in annual economic impact at full buildout while expanding opportunities in medical education, life sciences, healthcare, and research. Its first phase delivers a major academic and research space, structured parking, public gathering areas, an activated ground level consisting of retail and restaurants, multimodal infrastructure, and a public realm rooted in the story of Brooklyn.

What began as a site evaluation effort has grown into one of Charlotte's most ambitious urban developments and an ongoing, multi-phase partnership. Through collaboration, innovation, and a commitment to honoring community stories, The Pearl is creating a place where education, discovery, infrastructure, and public life converge. As future phases continue, the district will remain a powerful example of how planning, engineering, and landscape architecture can shape not only a city's physical environment, but also its identity and future. For Kimley-Horn, The Pearl also reflects the value of sustained client service: early site work grew into a comprehensive role that helped engineer the foundation for a new Charlotte skyline.

As seen in LASN magazine, October 2026.