$24.78M Hornets Performance Center Fit-Out Tracks $1.7M-$2.2M LV Scope

A $24.78 million interior fit-out permit at the Charlotte Hornets' new Novant Health Performance Center puts four core low-voltage systems into a live construction package: Structured Cabling, Access Control, CCTV, and professional Audio/Visual. Applying a sports-facility benchmark to that specific permit produces an estimated $1.7 million to $2.2 million low-voltage range, with a planning midpoint near $1.98 million.

The permit is not the entire development budget. It sits inside a much larger, technology-heavy program that the Hornets now value at approximately $190 million. For contractors, the useful signal is the package boundary: a defined interior permit, a separate shell-and-core permit, a named construction team, and a spring 2027 opening target that makes coordination and commissioning time more important than the headline program number.

Project Overview

Mecklenburg County permit records show permit B4837086 issued July 7, 2026, with a reported value of $24,783,200 for the performance center's interior package at 150 N. Caldwell Street. Signal classifies the package as a sports and commercial upfit and tracks four low-voltage systems. A sibling county record, permit B4834369, carries a separate $70.3 million shell-and-core value; it is related to the same facility but is not the denominator used for this spotlight's LV estimate.

The Hornets' official project page describes more than 160,000 square feet directly across from Spectrum Center. The program includes over 100,000 square feet for practice, training, and recovery; two full-size basketball courts; 35,000 square feet of administrative offices for more than 250 team employees; street-facing retail; and an orthopedic and sports-medicine clinic operated with Novant Health. Construction started in March 2025, the structure topped out in May 2026, and the current project team says the facility is scheduled to open in spring 2027.

Tracked Package	Interior fit-out, Mecklenburg County permit B4837086
Location	150 N. Caldwell Street / adjacent to Spectrum Center, Charlotte, NC
Permit Value	$24,783,200
Separate Shell/Core Permit	$70,300,000 under B4834369
Reported Program Value	Approximately $190 million
Facility Size	More than 160,000 square feet
Current Milestone	Structure topped out; interior construction underway
Target Opening	Spring 2027
Signal LV Score	10/10

Scope warning: the $24.78 million interior permit, $70.3 million shell/core permit, and $190 million reported program value overlap at the facility level and must not be added together. The LV range below is tied only to the $24.78 million interior package. Fire Alarm and DAS appear on the separate shell/core Signal row and are not silently stacked into this estimate.

Key Players

This is a Tier 1 project with a public, source-backed delivery team. The Hornets and Novant Health are the operating and healthcare partners, while design, construction, and owner's representation are already assigned. That means a specialty contractor's practical route is through the established construction team and its trade-package process, not a cold pitch to an unnamed developer.

Role	Organization	Project Relevance
Owner / Operator	Hornets Sports & Entertainment	Team operations, basketball performance, business offices, and private funding above the city's contribution.
Healthcare / Naming Partner	Novant Health	Public orthopedic and sports-medicine clinic plus performance and recovery collaboration.
Construction Manager	Gilbane | Leeper joint venture	Gilbane Building Company and Charlotte-based R.J. Leeper lead construction and reported the May 2026 topping-out milestone.
Design Architect	Populous	Sports-performance, recovery, administrative, retail, and public-clinic design.
Owner's Representative	Lincoln Property Company	Owner-side project representation identified by the construction team.
Project Management	CAA ICON	Planning, project development, preconstruction, and management services.

Low Voltage Systems Breakdown

The four systems attached to the interior permit look ordinary until they are placed inside a professional sports facility. Two full-size courts, a clinic, performance labs, recovery suites, offices, retail, content-production rooms, and restricted player areas create multiple security zones and dense data demand. The work is less about pulling cable to generic endpoints and more about coordinating pathways, bandwidth, latency, device placement, privacy, and commissioning across several specialist vendors.

System	Category	Likely Package Scope	Complexity
Structured Cabling	Data / Voice	Fiber backbone, Cat6A horizontal cabling, equipment rooms, court-side and ceiling device drops, office and clinic outlets, wireless access-point pathways, certification testing, labeling, and as-built documentation. High-density sports-science endpoints make spare pathway capacity and rack planning material bid items.	High
Access Control	Security	Credentialed separation among public retail and clinic areas, team offices, player-only training and recovery zones, secure parking, back-of-house circulation, and equipment rooms. Door hardware coordination, elevator interfaces, visitor management, and life-safety release logic will drive labor.	High
CCTV / Video Surveillance	Security	IP cameras across public approaches, parking, loading, clinic circulation, office areas, and restricted team spaces, with careful privacy boundaries around treatment and player-performance areas. Scope should include PoE design, VMS configuration, storage planning, analytics rules, and turnover documentation.	High
Audio/Visual	AV / Sports Technology	Practice-court displays, film-review rooms, conference and coaching spaces, digital signage, podcast and content-production rooms, team meeting areas, retail and clinic displays, audio distribution, control systems, and AV-over-IP transport. The key risk is integration with owner-furnished sports technology.	Very High

The owner-furnished boundary

A current construction tour reported by Axios Charlotte identified 40 motion-capture cameras, eight PlaySight cameras, four NOAH shot-tracking systems, 18 wearable Kinexon sensors, force plates installed below the courts, and two 27-foot-wide LED review screens. Those devices should not automatically be priced as contractor-furnished LV equipment. They are likely to be owner-furnished, specialty-vendor-furnished, or carried in dedicated technology packages unless bid documents say otherwise.

The integration labor still lands somewhere. Pathways, supports, fiber and copper links, equipment-room space, network segmentation, mounting coordination, electrical interfaces, test plans, and final commissioning are the pieces an LV integrator should clarify before accepting a lump-sum scope. The most expensive miss would be assuming that a vendor provides the complete physical layer when its contract only covers devices, software, and calibration.

Estimated Low Voltage Value

Signal does not carry an awarded LV contract value for permit B4837086, so this spotlight uses a calculated range. Sports and entertainment facilities commonly support an LV share around 8% because they combine data, security, and AV at higher density than a standard office. The selected permit tracks four systems, so the base system-count multiplier remains 1.0 rather than adding an extra complexity factor.

Interior Permit Value	$24,783,200
Modeled LV Percentage	7%-9%
System Count Multiplier	1.0x for four systems
Estimated LV Range	$1.7 million-$2.2 million
Planning Midpoint	Approximately $1.98 million

The low end is appropriate if major court-tracking, display, network-electronics, and specialty clinic systems are owner-furnished. The high end becomes plausible if the integrator carries extensive AV-over-IP, content-production spaces, large display infrastructure, security head-end work, and full commissioning. This range excludes servers, active enterprise networking, medical devices, sports-performance sensors and analytics subscriptions, line-voltage distribution, and Fire Alarm or DAS work carried under the separate shell/core package.

The larger $190 million program figure is useful context, not a second estimating base. Applying 8% to the full program would produce $15.2 million, but that number would improperly sweep structure, parking, sports equipment, hydrotherapy, medical equipment, owner technology, and other scopes into one LV assumption. Contractors should estimate the actual bid package, not the press-release budget.

Skills and Certifications Required

This package needs crews that can work across enterprise networks, physical security, and professional AV while coordinating with medical and sports-technology vendors. A single discipline can perform cable installation, but design ownership, programming, cybersecurity, system testing, and integrated commissioning call for senior specialists.

System	Key Certifications	Critical Skills
Structured Cabling	BICSI INSTC / INSTF, BICSI TECH, RCDD for design oversight	Cat6A and fiber installation, pathway fill, Fluke DSX and OLTS testing, rack elevation planning, labeling, and closeout documentation
Access Control	Manufacturer platform certification; ASIS PSP for senior security design	Door hardware, credential workflows, controller and lock power, elevator and parking integration, network segmentation, and life-safety interfaces
CCTV	VMS and camera manufacturer certification; CompTIA Network+ or equivalent	PoE design, camera placement, privacy zoning, analytics, bandwidth and storage calculations, VMS programming, and evidence-quality commissioning
Audio/Visual	AVIXA CTS, CTS-I, and CTS-D; relevant DSP and control-platform certifications	AV-over-IP, display and projection systems, DSP tuning, control programming, acoustics, broadcast-quality signal transport, and multi-vendor commissioning

North Carolina maintains a special restricted Fire Alarm/Low Voltage electrical contracting classification. The State Board's published rules define the scope and note that special restricted licensees are not subject to the normal project-value limits for limited and intermediate licenses. Bidders should confirm the exact classification, qualified-individual listing, local permits, and any security-alarm requirements that apply to their package before pricing.

Bid Timing and Market Signal

The opportunity is now in an integration window, not an early concept window. The structure topped out in May 2026, interior work was visibly underway in August, and the current construction schedule points to spring 2027. No public open LV solicitation was verified during this research. Contractors should treat Gilbane | Leeper's trade-package process, vendor coordination, commissioning schedule, and closeout requirements as the real bid-timing signals.

Charlotte is also showing what modern professional-sports work looks like: venue technology is spilling beyond the arena into training, health, content, offices, retail, and district development. A performance center can look like four systems in a database while behaving like a hybrid of an arena, medical clinic, data-rich lab, corporate headquarters, and broadcast studio. Integrators that can document network performance and coordinate owner-furnished technology will have an edge over firms that price only devices and cable footage.

The project's public funding structure reinforces the account opportunity. City records show a $30 million contribution to the performance center while the Hornets fund costs above that amount. The result is a high-profile private operating environment with a public stakeholder, a long-term team commitment to Uptown, and a technology standard likely to influence future sports and mixed-use development around Spectrum Center.

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