Turning Vision into Reality: Lintmen’s

Old mill turned food hall, hmm sounds very familiar for that area! What will it be called? Centerstage? No. What about 2315 NoDa? Nah, too boring. Lintmen’s? That’s it! Reimagining 4 acres to inspire creativity and it's close to the NoDa Arts District.

October 2019 is when our team kicked off the project and I was chosen to be one of the head civil engineers for Lintmen’s. This would be another adaptive re-use project which are the best in my opinion! Being a part of the vision and bringing the idea to life is truly rewarding.

Our project scope included our standard land development services from design to construction. The construction documents included repurposing the two existing buildings, some road improvements to 26th Street, adding parking and maneuvering areas, and new utilities and storm. The amenity area is probably the star of this whole project as it connects you, not only to the space, to the community as well. The XCLT Trail intersects to Lintmen’s backyard which is where you will find grain silos for shade, seating, play area and splash pad that everyone will enjoy. It’s like going to your neighborhood barbeque and hanging out with everyone.

After doing a preliminary design development set and some amenity concepts with the client, we got started on the construction documents in early 2020. Unfortunately, most of our initial plan production and first submittals occurred during the midst of COVID lockdowns forcing us all to work remotely from home. This created a new set of challenges that we hadn’t encountered before, but we quickly adapted and found a way to get quality work completed even when we weren’t together. I spent hours on Teams calls training a new college hire on how to design storm and utilities as Lintmen’s was one of the first projects he was getting a chance to help with.

By January 2021, we obtained the approvals needed to move from design to construction. Land Development, Charlotte Water, County Building, NCDEQ, and City Buffer Disturbance were among the municipality approvals that we needed to transform this old mill to a food hall. Hollie was the project manager for the project and lead landscape architect. She helped juggle things between Pamaka, various consultants, and reviewers. Through construction, Hollie and I routinely worked on Lintmen’s by answering RFIs, reviewing shop drawings, attending on site meetings, and completing asbuilts for utilities and storm to submit to the City for approval.

November 2022, Hollie and I attended the friends and family event at Seoul Food Meat Company before it opened. I had so much fun seeing all our hard work completed and being enjoyed by customers. The whole site looks great, but the amenity area is the showstopper and my favorite part of the project! I’m proud to have been a part of helping this unique project come to life and I look forward to taking my friends and family to enjoy a beer in Lintmen’s backyard!