Wedding DJ at Charles Mack Citizen Center in Mooresville, NC

The Space

The building that houses the Charles Mack Citizen Center started life in 1925 as Belk’s Department Store, and it stayed a Mooresville retail landmark until Belk’s closed in 1990. Duke Power, now Duke Energy, then bought the property and gave it to the Town of Mooresville, which used proceeds from the sale of Lowrance Hospital to open it as the Mooresville Citizen Center in 1995.

A $4.5 million renovation ran from 2001 to 2005, funded by the CJ Mack Foundation and named for Charles Mack, a longtime Mooresville merchant whose father John Mack immigrated from Lebanon in 1903. The building was rededicated as the Charles Mack Citizen Center in May 2005, and original Belk’s tile was preserved at the Main Street entrances, so a couple touring the space is walking through a building with a real retail history still visible underfoot.

Capacity & Layout

The facility has six banquet rooms: Moore, Burlington, Lowrance, Merchant, Cedars, and Peddler. Three of them, Merchant, Cedars, and Peddler, combine into a 6,768 square foot ballroom that holds up to 570 standing or 500 seated, which gives a couple real range to plan around, from a smaller single-room reception up to a full combined ballroom for a large guest list.

Outdoors, Alice’s Garden holds up to 220 standing and includes two water features and market lighting, while Kelly Courtyard holds up to 150, giving two different outdoor options for a ceremony or cocktail hour before guests move indoors. The Joe V. Knox Auditorium seats up to 233 in a vintage theatre-style space with built-in performance amenities, an option for a couple who wants a more formal ceremony setting than a banquet room offers.

Amenities

A 400 square foot Hospitality Suite functions as a bridal headquarters on the day of, and two commercial catering kitchens support a full-service meal without outside equipment being trucked in. In-house rentals cover tables, linens, a dance floor, and an arbor or backdrop, and a portable bar is available, which meaningfully narrows the separate rental list a couple would otherwise be building from scratch.

Roughly 9,000 square feet of pre-function space runs throughout the building, useful for a cocktail hour, guest book table, or overflow before a ballroom opens for dinner. The venue also offers what it describes as state-of-the-art audio and visual equipment on site, and ample parking in its downtown location, and it has picked up several venue awards over the years, including recognition from Convention South and Lake Norman Currents.

Location & Getting There

The Charles Mack Citizen Center sits in downtown Mooresville, North Carolina, with ample on-site parking, a facility that hosts more than 1,000 events a year for the community, which means it runs like a well-practiced event operation rather than a venue still learning its own logistics.

With six banquet rooms, a vintage auditorium, and two separate outdoor courtyards to choose from, a DJ setup here changes with the room: the combined Merchant, Cedars, and Peddler ballroom is a large enclosed space built for a dance floor and a full sound system, the Joe V. Knox Auditorium carries voice and music differently with its built-in performance features, and Alice’s Garden and Kelly Courtyard are open-air, so ceremony sound out there needs its own separate setup from whatever runs indoors later.