UNCC’s planned uptown building (above)Good news for N.C. architect Phil Freelon. His firm, the Freelon Group, has been named to a team that will design the Smithsonian’s new Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall. David Adjaye, an up-and-coming young architect from London, will be lead designer. The Freelon Group is also designing Charlotte’s now-under-construction Afro-American Cultural Center, to be named for architect and former Mayor Harvey Gantt.
Speaking of Gantt, he was one of the many glitterati (such as we have in Charlotte) at the UNC Charlotte groundbreaking on Monday for the 12-story building at 9th and Brevard streets uptown. Among the folks who spoke or whom I spotted in the crowd: UNC system president Erskine Bowles, UNCC trustees chair Ruth Shaw, Mayor Pat McCrory, City Council members Patsy Kinsey, Anthony Foxx and Andy Dulin, county commissioners’ chair Jennifer Roberts, ex-BofA exec Dennis Rash, former First Union CEO Cliff Cameron, retailers Al and Leon Levine, and a string of city staffers including City Manager Curt Walton.
And if the firepower assembled at that party tent makes any difference, you should put money on the northeast transit corridor — an extension of the existing Blue Line — being renamed the Green Line, after UNCC’s colors. References to the “green line” drew enthusiastic applause.