Author: Mary Newsom

Was light rail at root of odd council budget vote?

A source with good Charlotte City Council information tells me this morning it’s highly likely the bizarre 6-5 City Council vote Monday night to spike the proposed city budget (but proposing no other budget, either) was related to an attempt in the N.C. Senate to kill any state funding for Charlotte’s Blue Line Extension project. (Click here for more on the council’s budget vote.)

The proposed Senate budget, released Monday, as reported by the N.C. Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, would cut the state’s transit programs by “eliminating the New Starts Program and transferring the $28.9 million to the General Maintenance Reserve. The Charlotte light rail Blue Line Extension is the only project in the New Starts Program. The budget bill specifically says public transportation appropriations shall not be expended on any fixed guideway project in Mecklenburg County. There is an additional provision that says fixed guideway projects can compete for Highway Trust Fund dollars under the equity formula.”
 
What’s the connection to the city budget? My source believes the issue is Republican opposition to the city’s proposed streetcar project, which would have cost $119 million, part of the almost $1 billion, multiyear capital projects budget City Manager Curt Walton proposed. The capital program is what would have required a property tax increase of 3.6 cents per $100 in property value.

Council member Michael Barnes, a strong supporter of the BLE, which would run through his district, asked several questions during the council meeting to make Charlotte Area Transit System chief Carolyn Flowers  specify publicly that the 30-year CATS plan, funded with a countywide sales tax, does not include money for the proposed streetcar project, which would come from city money only.

My source speculates that the four council members who raised barely a peep against the budget through months of council discussion and who were part of a 9-2 straw vote for it May 30, but then voted against it Monday – Barnes and at-large members Patrick Cannon, Claire Fallon and Beth Pickering – will try to get the streetcar removed from the capital budget. Why? Because influential Republicans at the state level don’t like it, and may be using the BLE as a bargaining chip. I won’t identify whom my source named as behind it until I can get that person’s comments.

And I’m seeking comment from some of those council members. Will update this when I have more information.

A new look for South Tryon Street

It’s little things like this project that will add up, over time, into a much more pleasant experience for people walking into and out of uptown Charlotte from South End and Morehead Street. Here’s a photo of the newly widened sidewalk on South Tryon Street on the bridge over the I-277 freeway.

It used to be a stark, back-of-curb concrete sidewalk where you had to choose whether to get uncomfortably close to traffic or uncomfortably close to the railing where you could look down and see where your body would splat if you leaned too far. (Technically, the railing would have protected you from falling, but the place still felt dangerous.)

The city of Charlotte oversaw a project to shrink the number of travel lanes, widen the sidewalks from 5 feet to 12 feet and add bike lanes. A few cosmetic improvements include changing the railing and adding pedestrian-scale street lights.

The project cost, including design, was $2 million. The bridge over I-277 is state-owned, so the Charlotte Department of Transportation worked with the state DOT, which had to approve the changes.

Here’s a piece I did in 2010 about the project. You can decide for yourself whether the reality looks like the drawing that envisioned the project then.

A ribbon-cutting will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday (June 19).

Photo: Courtesy of City of Charlotte

What’s next for new greenway? Consider this …

I popped in Tuesday to the public workshop on possible changes to the Interstate 77-Interstate 277 uptown freeway loop. (See “Changes ahead for uptown Charlotte freeway.”)  As I looked over the maps and nosily read other folks’ comments on various sticky notes, I spotted this scrawled on a large flip chart set up for written comments:

“PLEASE put greenway connecting under Independence to connect new CPCC expansion w/Cordelia Park.”
 

A few feet away, I spotted Gwen Cook, the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Department’s greenway planner. I asked if that was her suggestion, I asked. She chuckled and confessed..

The issue is a thorny one. You can walk on the greenway all the way from behind Park Road Shopping Center through Freedom Park, past Central Piedmont Community College and up to East Seventh Street. There, the greenway is halted by a tangle of freeway ramps going under-over-around-and-through, as I-277 meets with U.S. 74 (Independence Boulevard), forcing both Seventh Street and Central Avenue onto bridges over the freeway traffic. From the Seventh Street bridge you can see Little Sugar Creek far below, except where it’s been forced into culverts.

But as the crow flies it’s just a few hundred yards (well, maybe a little more) to where the greenway picks up again at 12th Street and heads north to Cordelia Park at North Davidson Street and Parkwood Avenue. (Here’s a link to the park department’s greenways page, with maps.)

From what Ive been told, there’s no official plan at this point for how to connect the segments.  So, I asked Cook, what would you really like to see? Her idea: Build an iconic bridge that would weave over and under the highway ramps and lanes.

I can almost see it now – a visually splendid bridge soaring and swooping across the chasm of highway, with bright colors and sharp design. Other cities have found donors or tourism tax dollars to build one-of-a-kind bridges. (Click here to see the Greenville, S.C., pedestrian bridge) Below is the Santiago Calatrava-designed Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay in Redding, Calif., built with help from a local foundation. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

No TOD for you!

Have you noticed that huge lot being cleared and graded on Woodlawn Road between Old Pineville Road and Interstate 77, about a half-mile from the light rail stop? Curious whether that part of the city is finally going to see some true-to-the-plan development designed with transit in mind, I asked city planner Kent Main what was up

Main led the Woodlawn Transit Station Area Plan process that resulted in this document, adopted in October 2008. The plan calls for “Transit-Oriented Development-Employment” for much of the area in the so-called Transit Station. It says: “New development within the Transit Station Area should have uses, intensity, site and facade design, and transportation elements that are consistent with the Transit Station Area Principles outlined in the Introduction to South Corridor Station Area Plans.” Here’s a link to that document.
The station area principles document says: “Transit Station Areas are higher density areas within a 1/2 mile walk of an existing or planned rapid transit station. They typically provide a mixture of pedestrian-oriented housing, employment and retail services designed to promote travel to and from them on transit.”
On page 11 it goes into even more detail. Among other things, it says, development in the station areas should “disallow automobile-dependent uses, such as automobile sales lots, car washes and drive-thru windows.” Further, it says, transit-oriented development in these areas should:
  • – Orient buildings to front on public streets or open spaces.
  • – Minimize setbacks and locate parking to the rear.
  • – Provide windows and doors at street level and minimize walking distance to entrances.

Buildings designed and situated in those ways make an area easier and more attractive to navigate on foot. That helps make it possible for people to live near a station, walk to nearby shopping, take light rail to work or to get uptown. In other words, in the long run people who live in those areas don’t need to drive as much – saving them money and helping ease the upward trajectory of the city’s traffic congestion.
So what is being built at that cleared lot? I was hoping for a good example of new, transit-oriented design, given the adopted plans and existing conditions on that part of Woodlawn. Nearby are: a Bojangles with drive-through window, some vintage ’70s office park developments, deteriorating old chain restaurant buildings, a few motels, a handful of comparatively thriving restaurants including Azteca and Carolina Prime and three or four gas station/convenience stores. It’s predictable highway-oriented commercial development circa 1980.
Kent Main told me the property is going to be … wait for it … a gas station/convenience store.
The site was never rezoned to TOD zoning but remains zoned B-2 General Business, which allows gas stations/convenience stores. Thus the new gas station not only isn’t transit-oriented development but it didn’t even have to go through a rezoning. Main didn’t say this, but Charlotte’s B-2 zoning is not only not transit-oriented, but it’s suburbanized city planning standards from the disco era, nothing that most of today’s planners would be recommending for such a location. 

In an email, Main explained: “We did not rezone these station areas, relying on the carrot of higher density if and when TOD does become a viable opportunity.”
He noted,  “The Woodlawn Transit Station Area Plan does indeed show the site as appropriate for Transit Oriented Development. In practice, given the heavy traffic on Woodlawn, the proximity of the I-77 ramps, and remoteness from the actual transit station, that is a hard sell there.”
I realize it isn’t always a good idea for the city to pro-actively rezone land in its transit station areas, and that if developers aren’t interested in (or able to get financing for) developing land, simply rezoning it may not solve that problem. I also realize sometimes you have to decide whether some development is better than no development, that those decisions may not be easy. But yet another gas station/convenience store inside a transit station area? That isn’t at all what the plans envision.

Whither crumbling Modernist plazas?

Minneapolis has its own version of Charlotte’s Marshall Park, a vintage mid-century plaza of aging concrete that few love or visit. In Minneapolis it’s Peavey Plaza. “Minneapolis Tussles Over a Faded Plaza,” is the New York Times’ article.

It’s another example of the dilemma over how much unloved, unpopular mid-century Modernism should be preserved. Ardent historic preservationists point out that 50 years ago people were tearing down Victorian houses because they were so “ugly,” only to wait a decade until people began to love them. Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Historic Landmarks Commission has posted a study of the city’s post-World War II  buildings to recommend which were worth National Register designation. Note, Marshall Park is not on the list.

However, the Times article recounts, in 1999 the American Society of Landscape Architects recognized Peavey Plaza as one of the nation’s most significant examples of landscape architecture, along with Central Park in Manhattan and the Biltmore estate in North Carolina. (That, alone, may offer more insight into what’s wrong with landscape architecture in America today than any other single piece of evidence.)

Built in the early 1970s (Peavey Plaza dates to 1975) after urban renewal razed a historically black neighborhood, Marshall Park is frequented most often by Canada geese. It had a moment of national glory as a stand-in for Farragut North in the Showtime series “Homeland,” filmed in Charlotte.

I don’t think every park adds value, especially in a city downtown with so many blank spaces from parking lots, empty lots, corporate plazas and such.

At the same time, I don’t think beauty alone, or popular opinion alone, should determine whether a building or other place should be preserved, or torn down and replaced. Even though I find almost all  Modernist architecture bleak, depressing and anti-human, I still believe examples should be saved. If for no other reason, they may serve to remind us of the awful ideas some so-called designers can come up with.

Today’s reads: Urban housing, post-crisis Charlotte, and a pox on high-rises

 Steve Mouzon of Original Green fires back at what he calls Skyscraper Fetish: the idea that to increase density in cities – generally considered an environmentally desirable goal – requires high-rise residential towers (examples of some in uptown Charlotte in photo, above).

In “Uninhabitable high-rises,”  he points out some of the problems: wind speeds grow with height, making cross-ventilation difficult. Glass curtain walls either cause immense glare, or must be so strongly sun-screened that it’s tough for light to penetrate far inside. Operable windows are problematic in tall buildings. And this:”Elevator motors consume more energy than any other single piece of equipment in a high-rise building.” 

Subdivisions go urban as housing market changes. USA Today’s Haya El Nasser asks: “Why are the giants of the building industry, the creators for decades of massive communities of cookie-cutter homes, cul-de-sacs and McMansions in far-flung suburbs, doing an about-face? Why are they suddenly building smaller neighborhoods in and close to cities on land more likely to be near a train station than a pig farm?”

Her answer: The U.S. housing industry is rethinking what type of housing to build and where to build it.
I’ve wondered whether some of the news about this trend might be wishful thinking, but El Nasser has facts to buttress her point:

“Latest Census data show that population growth in fringe counties nearly stopped in the 12 months that ended July 1, 2011, and urban counties at the center of metro areas grew faster than the nation as a whole, a USA TODAY analysis found.
“Central metro counties accounted for 94% of U.S. growth, compared with 85% just before the recession and housing bust.
“A recent Case Western Reserve University study found that Cleveland’s inner city is growing faster than its suburbs for the first time.”
Fortune magazine takes a look at Charlotte after the banking crisis: “Charlotte after the bank crisis: ‘Just fine, and you?’ ” Contains this great line: “And there you have the essence of Charlotte. It is a city that knows how to move on.” 
And for long-time Charlotteans or newer residents who are history buffs, here’s a video of driving through Charlotte streets in 1986. There’s footage from Indy Boulevard but, alas, no Thompson’s Bootery and Bloomery. I lived here then, and I had a hard time identifying a lot of the scenes. There were a lot of highways and convenience stores. The car radio music is fun, too.
Meanwhile, back in the OQC (Other Queen City, aka Cincinnati): “Getting it right in the Queen City.”
Photo credit: Claire Apaliski of UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute.

No more MUMPO. Get ready for … MILUMPO?

The Charlotte-region transportation planning agency known as MUMPO (Mecklenburg-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization) is almost certainly in for a name change.

That’s because a large piece of Iredell County, including Statesville and Mooresville, plus a decent-sized chunk of Lincoln County are now part of what’s known as Charlotte’s “urbanized area.”

I, personally, am hoping it will call itself MILUMPO. (Mecklenburg-Iredell-Lincoln-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization). Other waggish types, using the Catawba River basin as a unifying slogan, are musing about CRAMPO (as in, Catawba Regional Area MPO) or SCUMPO (Southern Catawba-Union MPO).

What is an MPO and why does it matter? See below. You may also wonder what is this “urbanized area” and why does it matter? The short answer is, “It’s complicated.”

The U.S. Census Bureau decides what an “urbanized area” is, via a complex formula that takes into account historical population centers. For the detailed answer click here. Do not expect common sense to play a large role. For instance, Gastonia, Rock Hill and Concord are not part of the “urbanized area,” but Statesville now is. Got that?

This piece by my UNC Charlotte colleague John Chesser and me last month, “A region by many other names,” goes into some of the absurdities under which the greater Charlotte metro region is divvied into this or that “region.”

Metropolitan planning areas, a.k.a. MPOs, set priorities for divvying up state and federal transportation money. They are required to take in the “urbanized area,” unless for some reason they decide to try to find another MPO who’ll agree to take it over. According to Bill Coxe, Huntersville’s transportation planner and chair of MUMPO’s technical coordinating committee, it’s possible some of the smaller non-Mecklenburg territories that are, as of this year, part of Charlotte’s “urbanized area” (examples: a very small part of western Gaston County and eastern Catawba County, and parts of northern Lancaster and York counties, S.C.) may end up becoming part of other MPOs, such as RFATS (Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study), or GUAMPO (Gaston Urban Area MPO). For that to happen, MUMPO must seek out and arrange with another MPO to take over the territory.  If MUMPO wants to keep that territory, it does. If no MPO exists to take it over, as is the case in Lincoln and Iredell counties, MUMPO keeps it. If another MPO does not want the added territory, MUMPO keeps it.

Why does any of this MPO stuff matter? Here’s why. Transportation planning, to be done well, should be undertaken at a fully regional level, with decisions made that balance needs in one area against needs in another. That is not what happens in the Charlotte region.

Depending on how you count, the region is split among as many as five MPOs, plus two Rural Planning Organizations. Those five are MUMPO, GUAMPO, RFATS plus Cabarrus-Rowan MPO (CRMPO), and, if you consider the Hickory area part of the greater Charlotte metro area, the Greater Hickory MPO (GHMPO). (An aside: in the Hickory area, the MPO is lodged in the regional land use planning agency, the Western Piedmont Council of Governments, a sensible arrangement yet to be adopted elsewhere in the Charlotte region.)

Bob Cook, MUMPO secretary, made a presentation on much of this to the Charlotte City Council’s Transportation and Planning Committee on Monday. Wednesday he’ll give a similar presentation at the MUMPO meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. in room CH-14 of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center.

Want to know more? Links:
MUMPO’s map of the new urbanized area.
Close-up of the Gaston County portion of the urbanized area
Close-up of the Lincoln and Catawba County parts of the Charlotte urbanized area
A summary of what new territory is in Charlotte’s urbanized area, and likely MPO scenarios

Highways, canals and how we spend our money

ULI report predicts future U.S. freeways will be tolled. Above: I-77 and Brookshire Freeway. Photo: Nancy Pierce
With some 3,000 Urban Land Institute members at the nonprofit group’s national conference in Charlotte this week, several ULI-related articles have come out taking a most rosy view of the Queen City. Links are below. 
And in a timely release, the Washington-based group of developers, planners, architects and others today issued its annual report on infrastructure, Infrastructure 2012: Spotlight on leadership. It describes the Triangle’s transit situation, and makes some important points:

– “Although governments may have greater success in finding efficiencies by doing more with less, the overall state of the nation’s infrastructure will continue to deteriorate unless the political will and funding to make the needed investments materializes”

– “Unfortunately, the United States is one of the few major economic powers lacking a national infrastructure policy direction: initiatives are left to percolate from local and state levels, often competing for resources.”

– “Freeways have seen their day – any new highway or added expressway lane will almost certainly be tolled.”

On Page 43 is a wrap-up of the Triangle area’s transit situation.  

 
And note the photo on Page 39, of Oklahoma City’s Bricktown Canal. I ran into former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys at Tom Low’s Civic By Design session Tuesday night – I spoke to a small but enthusiastic group – and Humphreys briefly described the capital city’s new canals, filled with city water.

The report explains: “Oklahoma City has developed an innovative way of funding civic projects – bundle them into short-term, focused packages, and subject them to a vote.” The third in the city’s Metropolitan Area Projects series of votes passed in late 2009 and is generating $777 million for downtown parks and other civic infrastructure. In December 2009, 54 percent of Oklahoma City voters OK’d a one-cent sales tax increase to pay for an ambitious parks and open-space agenda. The scheduled projects include a 5- to 6-mile streetcar system.
Unfortunately, a bout with the flu has kept me from attending Tuesday’s and today’s sessions. I hope to make it tomorrow. But in advance of the conference, several articles about Charlotte by ULI-affiliated writers have appeared. 
Here’s one from AtlanticCities.com, the online publication about cities from The Atlantic Monthly. It dubs Charlotte a “city of sidewalks.”  I think that may be a bit rosy for the current situation.
And the Charlotte Business Journal published “Charlotte’s on the right path” by Edward McMahon, a senior resident fellow at ULI. (Warning, article may be for subscribers only.)  He calls Charlotte the nation’s “most improved city,” and justly lauds the newly lively downtown and some praiseworthy areas such as Dilworth, Baxter in Fort Mill, and the town of Davidson. Then he maybe goes too far. Unlike cities that had to recover from disinvestment, McMahon writes, “It has recovered from fast growth, sprawl and suburbanization.” 
Recovered from sprawl and suburbanization? Er, not yet.

Weathering the downturn – or not?

For decades Charlotte was known as the metro region that simply shed recessions like water off a duck’s back. But will the current downturn belie that reputation? That’s the key question being explored today at a conference today that has drawn several dozen experts in regional resilience to Charlotte’s Duke Mansion.

Obviously the answer to that can’t be known just yet. But some interesting information has come out, particularly during a panel discussion I served on this morning. The group that came to Charlotte is the MacArthur Network on Building Resilient Regions, which has studied metro regions for years. They look at how metro regions react to major economic shocks. Are they resistent? Or do they bounce back, i.e., are they resilient? Or re they non-resistent? They studied the Charlotte region’s response to previous economic downturns – finding the region either resistant or resilient. But their study ended before 2007. They haven’t been back, and they wanted to get caught up on the situation here since the banking crisis.

One key stat we talked about: The metro region’s (that is, the MSA’s) percentage for employment in banking and finance is virtually unchanged now from what it was pre-2008. Another: The manufacturing sector in the region has gone from one-third of the employment in 1980 to, by 2005, less than 10 percent.

Another, from panelist John Connaughton, a UNC Charlotte economist: Since the downturn began, the U.S. has regained 40 percent of the jobs lost. North Carolina has regained only 25 percent of its lost jobs. The Charlotte MSA has regained 50 percent of its lost jobs. But, he pointed out, what Charlotte lost, when it lost the Wachovia headquarters when that bank was bought by Wells Fargo, was some high-paying jobs. The real issue, he said, is the loss of blue-collar jobs: manufacturing and construction jobs.

“Charlotte is a very diverse economy,” he said. He predicted the metro region will spring back. “It will be the star that it was,” he said.

The panel also talked, predictably, about the need for education. I mentioned the region’s history in the past centuries of not valuing education, especially for low-income farm- and mill-workers. And this region remains comparatively poor in post-baccalaureate education and research universities. UNCC is on the road to creating a reputation for research, but as Hal Wolman, director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy conceded, it does not now have a national reputation for research.

If cities are made more resilient to downturns by having strong education, government and health sectors, then Charlotte may be at risk. One out of three may not be enough.

Charlotte trails nation in walkability

Slate.com has been running a wonderfully written series about pedestrians, but in the No. 3 installment, about the WalkScore.com website, the article has a list of cities and neighborhoods deemed “most walkable” and “least walkable” according to the Walk Score formula. New York ranked most walkable. Charlotte wasn’t least walkable – that honor (?) went to Jacksonville, Fla. But the Queen City was the next-to-last.

I’ve written much about the need for more walkable neighborhoods and about more lights, crossings, sidewalks and – just as important – destinations within walking distance. And, as Tom Vanderbilt’s article makes clear, part of Walk Score’s value is that it bothers to quantify something that few other metrics do, and it coughs out an easily understood score, which makes comparisons easy. However,  it is not perfect.

Because of the flaws in the way it’s done, the Walk Score also makes comparisons suspect. For instance, it deems the Cherry neighborhood the most walkable in Charlotte. Um, why?

 Although I feel affection and protective toward that small, African-American neighborhood snuggled next to, but predates, Myers Park, and much as I hope its proximity to uptown does not ensure a future of high-rises, and evocative though its bungalows are and its wonderful square, surrounded with a school, a church, stores and houses – it is significantly less walkable than uptown (see photo above), or any of its neighborhoods. Yes, you can walk to Trader Joe’s, but that isn’t a full-service grocery. Is there a drug store in walkable distance? I suppose you can count the Target, but it’s across some yucky high-capacity streets. Cherry is technically walkable, but not comfortably walkable. Uptown has better amenities for pedestrians, better access to jobs and better access to transit.

One commenter on Slate had this to say:

The Charlotte data is laughable.

Cherry is a neighborhood where you are quite likely to get yourself killed if you are silly enough to walk there. Also the locations labeled B, D, and A are in Dilworth. Location H is in Myers Park, and location I is on the campus of Central Piedmont Community College. Only location G could even possibly considered as being sort of kind of on the extreme southern border of Cherry, and businesses on Kings Drive I’m sure would never think of themselves as actually being “in” that blighted neighborhood.

Charlotte has some walkable neighborhoods, especially Fourth Ward and to a somewhat lesser extent the newly-gentrified First Ward, but seeing how horribly inaccurate the cited data is makes me wonder about the other cities in this slide show.

For the record, I question the assumption that you’d get killed walking through Cherry. It’s  low-income, but that does not automatically equal Murder Central. But while Cherry is obviously a better place for pedestrians to get somewhere useful than, say, Windy Ridge, Raintree or Stonehaven, I would not rate it the city’s most walkable neighborhood.

If you have nominations or thoughts, pop them into the comments section below. I moderate comments, so there could be a delay of a few minutes or longer before they appear.