Author: Mary Newsom

A myriad of municipalities – the Gaston v. Union bakeoff

For years, as a public policy geek and former state editor, I’ve believed Union County, just southeast of Charlotte, has more municipalities than any other county in North Carolina. A frenzy of incorporations in the 1990s and early 2000s pushed Union ahead of Gaston County, which had held the record — at least as far as we knew.

But after doing a bit of research (for something else) I have learned that we in the N.C. Piedmont cannot hold a candle to the coastal county of Brunswick. At least, not if the N.C. League of Municipalities website can be trusted.

Check this out:
http://www.nclm.org/resource-center/municipalities/Pages/By%20County.aspx

Brunswick County has 19 incorporated municipalities, outstripping Union’s paltry 15.

And Union has 15 only if you count Mint Hill, almost all of which is in Mecklenburg County. Robeson County has 15 municipalities, and though two (Maxton, Red Springs) are split across two counties, they are predominantly in Robeson.

Gaston has only 14, and that includes two municipalities straddling the county line: Kings Mountain believes itself to be
part of Cleveland County. High Shoals is in Gaston and Lincoln counties.

Wake County also has 15 municipalities, according to the league’s list. But that list counts Durham (Durham County), Clayton (Johnston County) and Angier (Harnett County), and it splits Zebulon between Wake and Johnston counties and Wake Forest between Wake and Franklin counties. Both of those towns think of themselves as Wake County places. Subtract Durham, Clayton and Angier and Wake has 12 municipalities.

Bottom line: Brunswick County wins the most municipalities title. Its smallest is Bolivia, population 146, and Bald Head Island, 160. 

The power of metros to N.C.’s economy

Dan Barkin, a senior editor at Raleigh’s News & Observer, on Wednesday posted an eye-opening statistic about North Carolina’s economy on “The Editor’s Blog,” which he shares with other top editors at the N&O newsroom.

In “Metros dominate NC economy,” he writes that the seven largest metro areas generate nearly 70 percent of the state’s economy.  The Charlotte metro area alone is responsible for a quarter of the state’s economy. The Triangle (Barkin added together Raleigh-Cary and Durham MSAs) tally 22 percent.  That means, he points out, that Charlotte and the Triangle are nearly half the state’s economy.

A few things to note: First, the so-called urban/rural split in the state is a lot squishier than it may seem. Those “metro areas” (a.k.a. Metropolitan Statistical Areas) tend to include places that to most people would seem rural, and in some cases they’re bizarrely drawn. Examples: Marshville in eastern Union County,or Cat Square in Lincoln County. The counties are in Charlotte’s Metropolitan Statistical Area, but some of the smaller communities don’t feel very
urban.

Second, the statistics raise the question of how best to help the state’s struggling rural areas. If their economies are sinking, what’s the best way to help them? Does pulling power and resources from the areas where the economy is healthier work? Can they be more closely tied to the metro areas, through linkages of commerce, transportation and education? If the economy in an area is dying, when should you apply CPR or a feeding tube, and when (if ever?) do you remove the feeding tube and the heart-lung machines?

I don’t have the answers and I’m not sure anyone does. And a community that’s hurting is, of course, different from a patient in a hospital. But one answer that the data do appear to point to is that policies that damage North Carolina’s urban areas will likely be damaging a massive chunk of the whole state’s economic health. 

Triangle’s transit tussle – and its ‘expert’ trio

And speaking of public transit, which I often find myself doing, Rob Perks of the Natural Resources Defense Council last Friday posted a good summation of the situation in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill region, where two of the three counties have voted for a sales tax to start building a system of rail and bus lines throughout the region. But Wake County continues to balk.

And read on to learn about my research into a panel of three ostensibly unbiased “experts” that may have been a stacked deck.

First, here’s a link to Perks’ blog, “The Tussle over Transit in the Triangle.” It’s a good summation of the situation. Be aware that given Perks’ job and beliefs, it’s commentary, as opposed to a news article.

The situation: Wake County commissioners, dominated by Republicans, have stalled and stalled. Then they hired a three-person panel of “experts” to look at the local data and provide advice. One of the experts is Sam R. Staley, well known in planning circles as an anti-Smart Growth voice. He’s a research fellow at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian public policy think tank. Among those on Reason’s board of directors is David Koch, the billionaire oil industry mogul and conservative activist whose money in part has helped bankroll the Tea Party, among other political endeavors. But I digress.

Another of the three experts is Steve Polzin, director of the mobility research program at the Center for Urban …
Transportation Research at the University of South Florida. A Tampa Bay Times investigation in 2009 found that the center has frequently been critical of passenger rail travel, while promoting alternatives (highways and bus rapid transit) that it has been paid millions to study.  Read it here: One of rail’s biggest critics gets millions to study and promote alternatives

The article notes the CUTR’s history of opposition to rail transit projects. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio (who didn’t run for a third term in 2011) was critical of CUTR. She told the Times that CUTR’s objections to rail have held the area back and predicted they’d be recycled, again, to weaken public support of a light rail proposal headed for a 2010 vote. [That 2010 vote for a 1-cent sales tax for transit in Hillsborough County lost 58 percent to 42 percent.]

“I’ve been very disappointed in the role CUTR has chosen to play,” Iorio said. “I do believe academic think tanks can play a very important role in shaping public policy. But CUTR is such a waste of a resource. It’s one of the reasons why we haven’t moved forward with rail. It’s really been a shame.”

The third expert is Clarence W. “Cal” Marsella, former general manager of the Regional Transportation District and the public face of its multibillion-dollar and nationally praised FasTracks rail project.

Here’s an account of the panelists’ recommendations from the Raleigh Public Record.

Of course, transit and transportation scholars can legitimately disagree about the wisdom of one public policy course over another, and they can provide research data to support a wide spectrum of conclusions. That’s legitimate.  But for the Wake commissioners to name two prominent rail transit critics to a three-person advisory panel might be raising some eyebrows in the Triangle. 

Here are some links to Raleigh News & Observer articles on the three-member panel:

New urban workers want rail transit
Wake transit plan – which never got first look from commissioners – needs ‘second look,’ Triangle Transit chair says.

 

Charlotte council to vote on three preservation projects

The Cohen-Fumero house, designed by Charlotte architect Murray Whisnant

The Charlotte City Council at tonight’s meeting is expected to vote on designating three buildings as historic landmarks. The first is the Cohen-Fumero House. Read more about it at the PlanCharlotte article, “Can Charlotte learn to love Modernist homes?” 

For Charlotte, it’s an unusual selection:

  • First, it’s in East Charlotte, not a part of the city that’s been graced with many landmark buildings.
  • Second, it’s a mid-century Modernist home, an architectural style that while attractive to a younger, hipper population around the country, doesn’t get the love from the more traditionalist sectors in Charlotte, a city with a comparatively large bloc of traditionalist sectors.

But in its favor is this: Landmarking historic properties is easier in parts of the city that are not seeing intense development pressure. That’s why so many historic properties in uptown were wiped away; the dirt under them was too valuable for new development.

Some personal disclosure here: I’m friends with the original owners, artists Herbert Cohen and Jose Fumero, who in the 1950s and 1960s hosted much of the Charlotte “Creative Class” in their living room for Sunday dinners. They’ve been together for something like 50 years, which in itself is worthy of note. And I’m friends with the architect who designed the house for them, Murray Whisnant. Whisnant, a Charlotte native who also designed the Rowe Arts Building at UNC Charlotte, has been a creative force in the city for decades. 

The other two properties are mills: The Defiance Sock Mill in the Third Ward neighborhood, and the Louise Mill, built in 1897 in the Belmont neighborhood.  Charlotte is (finally!) seeing an impressive collection of renovated and adaptively reused mills dating to its textile-industry past. Among the notable projects:
Atherton Mill in South End, Highland Mill in NoDa, the Charlotte Cotton Mill uptown, and Alpha Mill in uptown/Optimist Park. (I’m not sure where one neighborhood ends and the other begins.)

To see the reports on the historic properties on tonight’s City Council agenda:
Click here for the Cohen Fumero House.
Click here for the Defiance Sock Mills.
Click here for the Louise Cotton Mill.

Least walkable city in U.S. is – wait a minute, that’s us!

Uptown is one of Charlotte’s most walkable areas, along with First and Fourth wards. Photo: Nancy Pierce

(Friday, Nov. 15: I’ve updated this with comments from Charlotte transportation officials. To see that expanded version, visit the article in PlanCharlotte.org: “Charlotte trails nation in walkability rankings.”)

Want to guess the large U.S. city rated worst for walkability by Walk Score, the national rating system?

That would be the Queen City. Take a look at the 2014 report. New York rated No. 1, followed by San Francisco, Boston, Washington and Miami.

But what does this ranking measure? The Walk Score website says it “measures the walkability of any address using a patent-pending system. For each address, Walk Score analyzes hundreds of walking routes to nearby amenities. Points are awarded based on the distance to amenities in each category. Amenities within a 5-minute walk (.25 miles) are given maximum points. A decay function is used to give points to more distant amenities, with no points given after a 30-minute walk.
Walk Score also measures pedestrian friendliness by analyzing population density and road metrics such as block length and intersection density. Data sources include Google, Education.com, Open Street Map, the U.S. Census, Localeze, and places added by the Walk Score user community.”

If I read that correctly, Walk Score doesn’t measure the existence of sidewalks (although Charlotte wouldn’t rank very high in that regard either). So this city’s typical Sun Belt-all-spread-out, low-density development means anything you’d want to walk to is probably farther away than in a more densely developed area.

Charlotte also would ran low in block length and intersection density – which essentially measures how well networked the city is with plenty of streets and street corners.Many parts of Charlotte developed during the cul-de-sac era, when streets intentionally did not connect to anything.
Even uptown, which at least had a strong grid when it was laid out a couple of centuries ago, has seen many instances of streets being eliminated to accommodate large-footprint projects such as ballparks, stadiums, convention centers and parks.

I’m seeking comment from Charlotte Department of Transportation officials, but I doubt this ranking will surprise them. 

Can light rail reshape this auto-oriented corridor?

I have auto-related uses on the mind this week, because at a 4:30 meeting today the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission is going to recommend yay or nay on a proposed auto mall (a collection of car lots from different dealerships) in the University City area. You can download the agenda for that meeting here.

(Update, 5:20 p.m.  The planning commission’s zoning committee unanimously recommended that the site be rezoned for an auto mall. Two commissioners who had earlier expressed opposition to the rezoning, Tom Low and Deb Ryan, weren’t at the meeting. The City Council makes the final decision.)

The city planning staff has switched from recommending against the rezoning to recommend for it, if some design and site plan issues are resolved. Interestingly, their issues earlier were not because it’s for a large chunk of auto-oriented uses within a quarter mile of a planned light rail station area, where the overall city policy calls for transit-oriented (i.e. walkable, compact, mixed-use) development. Instead the staff focused on design issues. (See the commentary on PlanCharlotte.org, “Don’t derail transit areas with an auto mall.”)

Yesterday, I  had occasion to drive on North Tryon Street, from the UNC Charlotte Center City campus to the main campus on University City  Boulevard.  I decided to count the auto-oriented businesses on North Tryon Street up to the corner of U-City Boulevard.  I started at Atando Avenue (where the idea occurred to me), so the count starts there.  Want to guess? The answer is ….

Looking ONLY at the right side of the street heading north (so I didn’t count Parks Chevrolet, Young Ford, etc.) I counted 32 used car lots, car rental businesses, auto parts stores, tire stores (new and used), repair shops, etc. If you want to count the Auto Bell car wash, make it 33.

Interesting side note: The auto junkyard was among the nicer-looking businesses along this stretch, due to its screening, landscaping, etc. The used tire stores were the junkiest.

My point here is that the new light rail line will plow through territory that is already heavily aimed toward automobile uses. And most of that territory carries zoning that already allows very nontransit-friendly uses. (See this, about a gated apartment complex at U-City Boulevard and North Tryon – no rezoning needed. Multifamily is fine at a transit station area, but large surface parking lots and a gated development are not.) Until the land use zoning in the area changes – and especially the standards for form and design – it will be difficult for the city to transform the area into a walkable, mixed-use and mixed-income neighborhood.

Regional planning and sticker shock

Will stickers on a map matter? Photo: City of Charlotte

After suggesting in print that people should attend last Thursday’s regional planning workshop, part of the CONNECT Our Future effort, it was only fitting that I, too, go. And a good time was had by all. Except …

We were assigned tables as we went in, and I ended at a table with two other Marys – Mary Hopper, recently stepped down as director of University City partners and a former chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission, and Mary Clayton, a transportation planner with Parsons Brinckerhoff. Also at the table were three UNC Charlotte urban design grad students, and a handful of other folks.  I am not sure that the table was representative of the population at large, but whatever. It was a good collection of people.

Our table moderator, Nadine Bennett, a planner with Centralina Council of Governments, which is administering the $5 million federal grant that funds CONNECT, asked us all to talk a bit about who we were and what we thought the region’s biggest issues are. Just about everyone said “transportation.” And just about everyone said, “We don’t want to become another Atlanta.”  One of the graduate students was, I am not making this up, from Atlanta, and she was particularly forceful on this point.

Bennett said that she had been the moderator for, I think, 17 different tables during a two-month series of workshops in 14 counties and at every one of those tables, people had said, “We don’t want to become another Atlanta.”
In other words, regardless of the interesting, lively, cultural vibe in Atlanta, its image in this part of the country is of one giant traffic jam and minimal public transportation.  Not sure that’s accurate, but that’s obviously what people envision.

The workshop exercise itself  involved placing stickers on a big map of Mecklenburg County, showing where we think new metropolitan centers (towers), activity centers, transit-oriented centers, etc., should be.  We had a small number of “walkable neighborhoods” that we could stick here and there on the map.  It was never clear why we couldn’t work toward making every neighborhood a walkable neighborhood. And it wasn’t clear why we were restricted to Mecklenburg County, because if anyone understands the reality that a metro area’s issues are not hemmed in by county lines, it would be the regional planners at the Centralina COG.

It was fun placing the stickers. Without a young child in the house my exposure to stickers has dropped and you forget how much fun they are. But as with most regional planning exercises of this sort, whether it was the RealityCheck 2050 workshop last June, or last week’s event or even the drawing up of area plans, I emerge frustrated. From what I see, in this city in this state, what’s in a plan seems to make little difference in shaping what ends up happening.

Do plans matter?

That’s for a lot of reasons. One is that national tax policy as well as the financing availability for developers both play a big role in how developments are structured. It is even tougher than before the downtown to get financing for mixed-use developments.

Another obvious reason that plans don’t get followed is that the plans themselves can be disconnected from the legal requirements for developers. Ordinances address such things as setbacks, allowable land uses, how many buildings can sit on how much land, etc. Those things shape the results. Some cities create land use plans that have the force of law. Others adopt a comprehensive plan and then systematically amend their ordinances to enable what the plan calls for.

Charlotte doesn’t do it that way. It adopts plans, then hopes developers will follow them. Unless the plans are 20 years out of date. In which case the planners may recommend in favor of a development that doesn’t follow the plan. Plus, sometimes plans have vague language which means nobody can tell if a development is following the plan or not. In any case, regardless of what plans say or what planners recommend, it’s elected officials who decide rezonings.

Less obvious: by-right zoning

A less obvious reason that plans may make little difference is that a lot of development takes place with no rezoning needed. Consider the vast, 733-student, gated and fenced apartment complex going up about a half mile from the planner University City light rail stop. No public notice or rezoning took place because the land was already zoned to hold suburban-form apartments.

Multifamily is a good use for a transit station area. But this design is not. Transit station areas are supposed to have walkable streets and connecting streets (walkability is closely related to short, connecting blocks, says Jeff Speck, author of Walkable City.) Transit station areas are not supposed to feature a 733-space parking lot between the light rail station and the residences, nor large wooded buffer areas — a suburban-style design. (An updated zoning ordinance could have prevented this.)

Charlotte’s Sharon Road West light rail stop. No other counties have opted in. Photo: Nancy Pierce

Last Thursday night, I had to leave before all seven tables reported out, but after five tables, all had recommended dramatically improving the area’s public transportation choices.Is that going to happen? A 14-county region means dozens of elected officials, and so far, none of those counties has offered to pay for public transit, because it would mean taxing the voters. If there’s a groundswell in the region for a transit tax, it’s not loud or well-reported on.

To be sure, the Salt Lake City region’s remarkable series of transit construction projects (building 70 miles in seven years) is reported to have emerged from a regional planning process, Envision Utah.

Can CONNECT produce any region wide consensus the way Envision Utah did? I’m hopeful. But not optimistic.

What’s up (or not) with a zoning ordinance re-do?


It’s been almost three months since a consultants’ report concluded the city’s zoning ordinance is seriously in need of updating. (See my PlanCharlotte.org article, “Report: Charlotte ordinance confusing, lacks modern tools” from July.

What’s happening next?  Planning Director Debra Campbell discussed that at an Oct. 7 meeting of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission, an appointed advisory board to the city’s Planning Department and City Council. 
Campbell said the planning staff is discussing how to link the zoning ordinance assessment process with their planning process. The planners want to look at whether a revised zoning ordinance would mean revising the way plans are done, which today are the “Euclidian model,” Campbell said. For non-planners, that means based on single-use zoning districts.  (The term “Euclidian zoning” isn’t about Euclidian geometry, but is named for the 1926 Supreme Court case, Village of Euclid, Ohio, v. Ambler Realty Co., which ruled that land use zoning is constitutional. The Euclid zoning ordinance was based on single-use districts, a type of land use generally considered suburban or rural, not suitable for large cities.)

 

“Our plans are very use-based,” Campbell said. “They’re colors on a map.” In other words, local plans tend to map large areas and, with color-coding, delineate land uses should go where. Instead, Campbell said, “I want them to focus on both use and character.” Sometimes, she said, getting too deep into the planning process can seem dry and boring to the general public. “In general people want to be involved with what’s it going to look like, what’s it going to feel like?”
Laura Harmon, the department’s director of development services, said the staff would have a better idea of how to link plans and the zoning ordinance “in the next month or two.”
Said Campbell: “If there’s a fatal flaw that I have, it’s that I like to go slow … I like to bring folks along with me.”

Lakeshore lessons for a city without a shore

A created wetland, part of the flood management program at Corktown Common Park. Photo: Waterfront Toronto

TORONTO – No, alas, I am not attending the Toronto International Film Festival. I’m here for a conference, Meeting of the Minds. (Follow on Twitter at #motm2013). Monday, a group of us toured a massive, years-in-the-making redevelopment project along Toronto’s waterfront. It’s called WATERFRONToronto.

But what might any of that mean for Charlotte? We are not a city perched on the edge of one of the Great Lakes (in this case, Lake Ontario). The only lakes nearby are artificial and nowhere near downtown. But it rains on Toronto the way it rains on Charlotte, and pavement sends pollutant-carrying water streaming downhill. Even if it isn’t polluted (but it probably is) the stormwater can flood low-lying areas, including buildings in floodplains and storm sewers. In Charlotte we send our stormwater into our creeks.

So I was interested to see some of the ways the city is working not only to reclaim old, industrial areas that used to flank the lakeshore, but how it’s trying to deal with the water that comes from the sky, and from flooded rivers.

Next to the lakeside, the new Sherbourne Common is a storm-water treatment plant, designed as a park with water-filled art.

Art at Sherbourne Commons uses the treated stormwater. Photo: Waterfront Toronto

The water that pours through its fountains is storm-water that’s been purified. A grassy field treats the water. A splash park with jets of spurting water is designed to become an ice-skating rink in winter (this is Canada, after all.)

Farther east along the lakeshore is Corktown Common, a park built specifically to filter and store stormwater. It’s planted with native plants, offers a playground and a splash-park for kids of all ages.

In search of ‘hipsturbias’ yet to come

Downtown Waxhaw: A ‘hipsturbia’ of the future? Photo: Nancy Pierce

Just the term “hipsturbia” makes you want to hear more. It appears to have been coined in a New York Times article in February, “Creating Hipsturbia,” which created serious buzz. It described a trend of formerly urban hipsters moving out to suburban towns because they couldn’t afford housing in the city, but who didn’t want to give up their trendy accouterments or shopping:

“As formerly boho environs of Brooklyn become unattainable due to creeping Manhattanization and seven-figure real estate prices, creative professionals of child-rearing age — the type of alt-culture-allegiant urbanites who once considered themselves too cool to ever leave the city — are starting to ponder the unthinkable: a move to the suburbs.

But only if they can bring a piece of the borough with them.”
 I took part in some lively discussion Tuesday at a Civic By Design forum on whether Charlotte or its environs has any “hipsturbia” spots or even hipsturbia-in-waiting areas. As you would imagine, even trying to define the term (much less defining what’s a hipster) was a discussion point.

  • Must places that attract hipsters be “gritty”?  
  • Does a place that planners would say is a walkable, mixed-use urban neighborhood (example: Baxter in Fort Mill, S.C.) lack hipster cred if it’s all new?
  • What about some of the region’s smaller towns with historic downtowns surrounded by standard suburbia, places like Belmont, Waxhaw, etc.? Does the presence of a traditional historic downtown overrule the dominance of suburbia?

Some of the comments:
Scott Curry, a planner with the Lawrence Group: It seems like hipsters gravitate toward cheap space, and places that offer “unregulated” environments. His example in Charlotte: NoDa, the old mill village neighborhood centered on 36th and North Davidson streets.

Other key attributes, Curry proposed: Gritty, unpolished neighborhoods. Proximity to a major metro center. And this observation: “Once a place becomes the cool pace to be, hipsters don’t want to be there anymore.” (Examples: Plaza Midwood and NoDa.)

Kevin Sutton, architect, who volunteers with NoDa’s neighborhood group: “We still have a little bit of grit.” But the neighborhood has to keep trying to keep its gritty edge, he said. Being near uptown is an advantage, although “you hit your wall when you run out of vacant buildings.” And, he said, it’s not all about physical form. It’s also about attitude, about finding your soul.

Daune Gardener, Waxhaw’s mayor, spoke about that Union County town’s effort to reinvest in its downtown and to move beyond the more recent, suburban-style development patterns. (See “Waxhaw looks to future with N.C. 16 plan.”)

Chatelaine, a subdivision between Weddington and Waxhaw, and clearly not “hipsturbia.” Photo: Nancy Pierce

 Can a place that’s a 45-minute drive from the city – with no transit service – ever be hipsturbia, even if it has a sweet, historic downtown? The audience didn’t take a vote, but doubts were expressed. Davidson and Gaston County’s Belmont were also mentioned as places with authentic downtowns but lacking the grittiness and diversity that seem to attract modern-day hipsters.

One audience member noted a map (produced by Locu) tracking hipster neighborhoods by sales of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. I mention it here simply because it’s interesting. He recalled that NoDa used to have “a theater behind the collapsed building down in the spot that collected water. … It was kind of icky. But it survived and thrived and gave the neighborhood a sense of something.” Hipster areas aren’t really places you can create zoning for, he said.

So, if vacant buildings and grittiness are essential for attracting hipsters, this question from Maddy Baer closed the evening: Why isn’t the whole east side hipsturbia by now?