High rise: Fred Klein emerged as a dominant Charlotte developer without calling attention to himself or his partnership team.

• Author: Williams, Allison
• Position: Building NC

When Childress Klein Properties Inc. gave $2.5 million to UNC Charlotte's Center for Real Estate in September, guests attending the check-passing ceremony received a brochure listing the development company's accomplishments. Without it, the partners assumed, few attendees would know much about the group making the donation. That's the understated, notoriety-free way that Fred Klein has operated as he, as much as any other real-estate executive, helped shaped the skyline of the state's biggest city over the last 37 years. His partnership is a third of a troika considered the first tier of Charlotte's development scene. The other two, Lincoln Harris LLC partner Johnny Harris and Bissell Cos. chairman Smoky Bissell, have higher profiles because of their civic activism and a generations-old family heritage as one of the region's biggest landowners. (Harris and Bissell are brothers-in-law.)

In contrast, Klein, 69, is a New Jersey native who had visited Charlotte once before moving there in 1978. Since then, Childress Klein has developed many of the city's most recognizable skyscrapers, largely because of its ties to the bank once called First Union, then Wachovia and now Wells Fargo. Less visible are dozens of suburban office and warehouse projects for clients including Belk Inc., TIAACREF and Daimler Trucks North America LLC, plus retail sites such as The Arboretum in southeast Charlotte. "You never see the Childress Klein name in lights, but that's the way they operate their business. They aren't self-promoters," says Chase Monroe, who has done lots of business with the company as Carolinas market director for Jones Lang LaSalle Brokerage Inc., a Chicago-based real-estate group. In other words, Childress Klein is the anti-Trump.

Now, the partnership is in the midst of one of its more glamorous projects: overseeing development of a 43-story apartment building atop Charlotte's Mint Museum Uptown. Scheduled to be finished next fall, the 525 South Church apartments reflect decades of relationship building and patience. Condominiums were part of the mix envisioned by former Wachovia Chief Executive Officer Ken Thompson and other civic leaders when they created Charlotte's museum district on South Tryon Street, adjacent to a 48-story headquarters that would rival Bank of America's skyscraper four blocks north. With $80 million in private funding complementing investments by Wachovia and local government, the district includes other museums, a performing-arts venue and retail space. Having spearheaded Wachovia's other large projects, Childress Klein was the natural partner for the project, says Bob Bertges, a Wells Fargo executive vice president of real-estate strategy.

Then the world shifted. A week before a sales center for the Mint's condominiums was slated to open in the fall of 2008, panic in the financial markets put a halt to the project, along with much other commercial development across the U.S. In December, Wells Fargo acquired...