A new era: Atrium unveils the Pearl, a $1.5B home for new Charlotte med school, STEM
Wake Forest medical school graduate Dr. Mike Lin watched his alma mater build Charlotte’s first four-year medical school near uptown from the ground up. He didn’t live too far from the construction.
“Charlotte has always been missing that, that medical education and medical industry, I guess, more so than a lot of bigger cities in Chicago, New York and all that,” he said.
On Monday, he celebrated the grand opening of The Pearl district alongside hundreds of people. The $1.5 billion mixed-use development marked a new era for health care, science and medical education in Charlotte, officials at the event said.
Atrium Health and Wexford Science & Technology partnered to build the project by uptown with goals to attract STEM business to Charlotte.
“And so it’s really exciting to see that come to our city, to be something that we can be proud of, that has grown here and brings all this talent to this community,” Lin said.
The Pearl is centered around Wake Forest University School of Medicine - Charlotte. It’s scheduled to open in the summer and will be the first four-year medical school for the region.
The project officially opened on Monday during a ceremony with presentations and events for the community. A silver time capsule sat on a table across from glimmering tall buildings for the new Pearl district. Attendees took pictures and wrote messages to remove from the capsule in the future.
Gene Woods, the CEO of Advocate Health (the parent company of Atrium), ceremonially pushed the doors open after city, Mecklenburg County and company leaders from Atrium and Wexford made remarks.
“Charlotte was the largest city in the entire country without a four-year medical school,” Woods said. “It wasn’t because we couldn’t support one. It was because we hadn’t built it yet, and we couldn’t keep watching talented students leave for opportunities elsewhere. So, we built The Pearl to change that.”
About Charlotte’s new med school
To make way for the medical school, the companies broke ground for The Pearl in 2023.
Atrium, Wake Forest and their partners were the first in the nation to announce a new medical school during the pandemic, according to Dr. Julie Freischlag, chief academic officer and executive vice president of Advocate Health.
Close to 15,000 candidates applied to be in the first class. Wake Forest accepted 48 of them.
Students will take classes in the Howard R. Levine Center. It was named after the former CEO of Family Dollar, whose foundation provided a $25 million gift to name the 14-story building.
The center will also house the Wake Forest University School of Business, the School for Professional Studies and Atrium’s Carolinas College of Health Sciences.
More about The Pearl
In addition to the school, The Pearl will also have retail, offices, apartments, parking structure and an outdoor plaza. Plans for The Pearl also include an affordable housing component.
The Pearl is at the intersection of Baxter and McDowell streets. That area was once known as the Brooklyn neighborhood, a historic Black Community. The Pearl District is named after Pearl Street Park, a landmark in the area.
Pearl officials paid homage to Brooklyn residents with artwork and exhibits throughout The Pearl. Members from the Brooklyn Coalition, an advocacy group addressing urban renewal, attended the event.
“This is an important milestone for our entire community,” said Mark Jerrell, chair of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners. “This investment has the potential to foster greater opportunities for our residents, scholars and workforce in a way that honors this community’s rich history, while also paving the way for a brighter future.”
One of the latest companies coming to The Pearl District is Siemens Healthineers, a German medical technology company. Siemens is constructing a 60,000-square-foot building with two floors.
The Pearl will also be the headquarters for Advocate Health, the parent company of Atrium Health.
IRCAD is also moving in to build its North American headquarters at The Pearl. The French company specializing in surgical techniques is a subsidiary of Atrium Health.
Connect Labs Charlotte by Wexford Science & Technology is scheduled to open a shared lab space for companies involved with science, technology and robotics.
Mayor Vi Lyles said The Pearl represents a shared vision and optimism that Charlotte doesn’t have to be just a banking city, a logistics hub or a tech town. It can be a national leader in medicine too.
The Pearl is expected to employ 5,500 people on the site and account for more than 11,500 total jobs across the region. Its estimated annual impact is more than $800 million, according to Atrium and Wexford.
This story was originally published June 2, 2025 at 4:37 PM with the headline "A new era: Atrium unveils the Pearl, a $1.5B home for new Charlotte med school, STEM."
