Smoky clears.

• Author: Mildenberg, David
• Position: NC TREND: Charlotte Region

Superlatives come easy in describing the sale of Bissell Companies' Ballantyne Corporate Park to New York investors Northwood Group. With a purported price of $1.2 billion, it's the largest real-estate transaction in state history. It also was the biggest payday for a real-estate investor in state history, because Chairman H.A. "Smoky" Bissell controls most of the company's equity, people familiar with the business say. (The company declined comment.) It also involves what some national real-estate analysts have deemed the most successful master-planned corporate office park in U.S. history.

That's what can happen when a shrewd businessman sees potential in undeveloped farmland, benefits from growth patterns and works incessantly to attract businesses that had plenty of other options for office space. To be sure, Bissell started on first base. The family of his late wife, Sara Harris Bissell, had owned considerable south Mecklenburg County land for generations. When first announced in 1991, Bissell's better-known brother-in-law, Charlotte developer Johnny Harris, was out front promoting the project. It helped that North Carolina opened the first stretch of Interstate 485 adjacent to the property in 1990, accelerating the Charlotte area's sprawl into Union and South Carolina's York counties. The Harris family's clout helped spur the building of the road.

Still, when Bissell bought 414 acres from Harris and his brother, Cameron Harris, in 1996 for $20 million, few expected that within 25 years, Ballantyne would sport more than 4 million square feet of office space, four hotels, a golf course and a bustling retail center. (The retail area is not part of the Northwood deal.) For years, Charlotte...