Local business owner Natasha Chapman wants to encourage other local entrepreneurs with a new live-work condominium in the Five Points area, Kings Domain.
Chapman, owner and hairstylist at Ta Ta’s Hair Design, purchased the lot on the corner of Princess and Pollock Streets many years ago as an investment property. Now, she has settled on how to utilize the property.
Kings Domain will be made up of four three-story condos that are customizable to fit the needs of each individual owner.
Her vision for Kings Domain is that entrepreneurs can purchase a condo and utilize the space however they please.
Some owners might use the first floor for their business, while utilizing the second and third floors as their own living space. Others might choose to live in the space above, while renting the first floor out to a business owner for passive income.
“If they already have a place to live, they can rent out the top, which helps them pay for their business,” Chapman said. “It also helps create generational wealth, where they’re not just renting all these years, but they have something for retirement, or to pass down to their kids.”
The first floor of Kings Domain will be set up as a commercial storefront with a glass door and windows and an optional elevator. The first floor in at 321 square foot space, that can be expanded to 638 square feet in the garage area.
The top two floors will be designed as a residential space with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two balconies, attic storage, and a laundry hookup. The residential space is designed with 1,707 square feet, but is expandable up to 2,028 square feet in the first floor.
Champan said she is going for a more luxurious look at King’s Domain with features like wood paneling and vaulted ceilings.
Owners of the unit will have the capability to truly use the three-story space as they please, according to Chapman. Individuals can choose to make the whole condo residential or they can choose to expand the commercial space into the above floors- whatever fits their intended use.
Each unit even has a separate electric meter for the residential and commercial spaces, so unit owners can distinguish between the two for tax or rental purposes.
Princeton McAfee, Chapman’s son and project manager for Kings Domain, said the condos will be completed unit by unit.
“What we’re going to do, is once we get everything roughed in, we’re not going to put any interior partitions in,” McAfee said. “We’re going to do that unit by unit.”
Their hope is to have the units purchased before it is time to put up the interior walls, so each unit can be laid out with the owner’s intended use in mind.
“Five Points is kind of trying to pick up and do some things now, so we’re just glad to be a part of the project,” Chapman said. “We can bring something to New Bern that is a unique look, it’s not your standard architect of a building.”
McAfee said most businesses would not have an issue moving their establishment into Kings Domain because their zoning classification is very flexible.
However, businesses who need a lot of customer parking, like sit down restaurants, could face problems with the downtown parking requirements.
McAfee and Chapman do recommend that business owners do their homework with the city prior to purchasing a unit, to ensure their business can operate at Kings Domain.
Each unit starts at $499,000, and the optional elevator would add about $30,000 to the price.
Chapman said the exterior of the building should be complete in about three to four months, weather dependent. Then, it will likely take about two months to put up the interior walls in the first unit.
“Originally, if you look at the Five Points area in the past, there were a lot of businesses. I thought it would be a good idea to kind of revitalize that,” Chapman said. “I’m an entrepreneur myself and if I had this opportunity when I was starting out, this would have been something I would have wanted to invest into.”
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