The man behind the rehab of the former Whiteway Laundry plant is overhauling another former commercial laundry facility, this time on Charlotte Avenue.

Steve Asbury, who runs Commercial Industrial Real Estate Associates Inc., is spending about $5 million on Charlotte 2300 Professional Center, which will open in August with 30,000 square feet of post-industrial office space located around a new courtyard.

Anchoring the development will be Flood, Bumstead, McCready & McCarthy Inc., a financial management firm focused on the entertainment sector. FBMM, which also has an office in New York, will move into about 12,000 square feet this fall. Its roughly 50 local employees are currently based on nearby Hayes Street.

Asbury told NashvillePost.com that the fact that the buildings at Charlotte and 23rd Avenue used to house a commercial laundry operation like Whiteway – which is now called Edgehill Village – is pure coincidence.

“I just love old, funny-looking buildings and when you walk in this one, it’s definitely old and funny-looking,” he said. Given the other redevelopment projects on Charlotte heading out toward Interstate 440, “it seemed like a natural to do something here.”

XMi Commercial is working on a similar overhaul, the Midtown Millworks office condos, five blocks away. Nonprofit group the Oasis Center has bought the top floor of that 56,000-square-foot complex and variety of other tenants have signed on for all of the ground-floor units, said XMi’s Stan Snipes. The closings for those should be complete by the end of April, with the last tenant moving in late this summer.

“The Charlotte corridor is changing drastically,” Snipes said. “We’re seeing Midtown extend over that way. A lot of nonprofit groups have moved there and other companies want to be close to the economic anchors in the area.”

Asbury said that, despite its proximity to both the Baptist and Centennial campuses, his project – which he’s leasing for $22 per square foot – isn’t designed to cater to the medical office market. Instead, he’s targeting creative-sector companies that prize a distinctive work environment.

Among the features of Charlotte 2300 are a 26-foot cathedral-type ceiling in the complex’s building fronting Charlotte, a restored 1920s-era freight elevator and offices housed in both the elevator car and shaft of an old ‘drum-and-rope’ Otis elevator.

Asbury is using the same design and construction team that converted the Whiteway plant into Edgehill Village. Among them: Norris Architects, Harvest Construction, Lee Co., Enterprise Electric and Star Concrete.