CliftonLarsonAllen has officially traded its Uptown skyline views for Ballantyne Village, cutting the ribbon Tuesday on a 50,000-square-foot Connection Center that comes with a roughly $10 million price tag. The new Charlotte hub is built to handle training, client events and regional teams under one roof, with company leaders marking the opening on May 12 during a ceremony at Ballantyne Village.
Inside the Ballantyne Connection Center
According to CLA, the Ballantyne site at 14815 Ballantyne Village Way is packed with flexible meeting rooms, training studios and collaborative spaces that are meant to "support learning, professional development, and personal growth." The 50,000-square-foot layout is slated to host regional and national meetings along with client experiences, and CLA officials say the setup is supposed to boost retention while making large-scale training easier for teams across the Southeast.
Part of a National Rollout
The Charlotte hub is the third Connection Center CLA has pulled online in recent years, following a Minneapolis opening in May 2025 and a Tempe and Phoenix launch last month. PR Newswire and company materials describe the network as a way to centralize training and client work that used to require more travel. Firm leaders have pitched the concept as concentrating specialized facilities and events in fewer but larger venues.
Why Ballantyne
Local business coverage has pointed to Ballantyne's lineup of hotels, office parks and access to Charlotte Douglas International Airport as reasons it keeps landing regional hubs. As reported by the Charlotte Business Journal, CLA's move lets the firm walk away from a longtime Uptown footprint while putting roughly $10 million into the new Ballantyne build-out. That swap tracks with a wider shift of firms choosing suburban locations that offer more contiguous space and baked-in event infrastructure.
What It Means for Charlotte's Office Market
Market research shows Charlotte leasing activity is clustering in top-tier buildings and amenity-rich submarkets, which tilts the playing field toward projects like Ballantyne Village. Data from Colliers Q1 2026 report points to tightening availability in premium office space, a trend brokers say helps explain why large suburban hubs are drawing interest. Local brokers and developers say Ballantyne's contiguous floorplates and nearby lodging make it efficient for multi-day training runs.
Bottom Line
For CLA, the new Connection Center delivers a visible, amenity-heavy footprint in one of the region's fastest-growing submarkets while creating a centralized home base for training and client engagement. Earlier reporting by the Charlotte Business Journal noted that the Ballantyne space was designed to host roughly 150 to 200 employees at a time for training sessions. Company leaders have said the center is part of a broader effort to "evolve the way we connect" across CLA's Southeastern operations.
