Wes Waters, who operates Waters Homes with his brother, Charles, stands on the site of the future 50-lot expansion of the company’s Lost Tree development on Pineville-Matthews Road, just east of Providence High School.
One longtime Charlotte family business is making a statement about the future on Pineville-Matthews Road, just east of Providence High School.
Construction crews already have laid the curb and median for the future entrance to the second phase of Waters Homes’ Lost Tree community. For 45 days, passing motorists have glimpsed logging trucks hauling trees from the 37-acre site and earthmoving equipment fashioning the path for roads and cul de sacs where Wes Waters expects to build 50 homes with a $700,000 price point.
Waters, who now runs the family development company with his brother, Charles, acknowledges the construction work has caused some associates to raise their eyebrows. But Waters said the project does two things.
First, it positions Waters Homes for the future.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he said on a bright, cold Tuesday morning when the frozen ground didn’t lend itself to construction work. “There’s one thing that you don’t get back, and that’s time. … This development could be years from completion, but when the market does turn for the better, we will have building sites ready.
“I see Charlotte’s future as bright. The market will come back.”
Second, the project keeps Waters’ 10 to 12 full-time employees busy while the company, like many others, fights through a recession that Waters hopes to not see again in his lifetime. “We want to protect our employees and help them get through this with the company.”
The company has a 50-year history – and commitment – in Charlotte. Charles “C.A.” Waters, the brothers’ grandfather, founded the company, and their dad, Bill, followed him. Waters Homes is known for developments like Bailewick, Windswept, Mallory Manor and the first phase of Lost Tree, which has its entrance on Alexander Road.
At the next phase of Lost Tree, company crews are installing stormwater collection lines now. Water and sewer lines will follow, and then the company will build the roads. Wes Waters expects lots will be available in the spring.
In the meantime, Waters Homes is focusing on Sumner Hall, a smaller, more affordable development on Old Providence Road near its intersection with Sharon View Road. The company acquired the foreclosed, undeveloped subdivision this summer from a bank, Waters said, and a company crew already is beginning to frame the first home in the 15-lot subdivision.
Sumner Hall will feature homes of about 3,500 square feet for about $300,000, the price that more homebuyers are looking for right now, Waters said.
When Charlotte begins to rebound, the city will “grow within” first, the builder said this week. He subscribes to the theory that the market will recover in two phases – the first within 10 to 15 miles of the city center and the second in surrounding towns outside that circle. The recession has left a lot of the suburban towns, like western Union County, overbuilt, and Waters thinks those areas will need much longer to recover.
But the interior city, within that 10- to 15-mile circle, will rebound quicker, he said.
His family company has been fortunate to weather a historic downtime better than many, and he knows “a lot of people are still hurting.”
Waters recalled advice his grandfather repeated to him often. “When I was a little boy around 9 or 10 years old, I would love to ride around to job sites with my grandfather,” he said. “I remember he would often tell me that you had to work as hard as you could and make the most of every day, because someday the construction and building would stop.
“At the time, I didn’t understand, but as I grew older and especially now, I recall those rides in the truck. He grew up during the Great Depression. He knew how times could be hard, and he believed it would someday happen again. And though he didn’t live long enough to see it, he was right, but now like then, things did get better.”
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