Author: marynewsom

My picks for best places to stand in Charlotte

I asked your opinions – and thanks for sharing, everyone – but didn’t give mine.

Yesterday I pointed to a list (link here to blog, and here to list) about the best places to stand in the U.S. and asked about Charlotte spots. But I didn’t include any of my own choices. These things require pondering, you know.

I concur with those who mentioned Queens Road and the cathedral of oaks, and the magnificent corner of Kingston and Lyndhurst avenues (see photo above) in Dilworth. Indeed, I spotlighted both places in a piece I wrote some years back about Great Streets in Charlotte. Brevard Court uptown was another in that series.

My favorite spots to stand in Charlotte (for today, at least) are listed below. Note, I’m including only inside the city limits, so Crowders Mountain is out, as well as various funky downtowns in other municipalities like Matthews or Davidson. And ask me tomorrow and I may have a completely different list. NoDa on a gallery crawl night is great. Looking out from the 60th floor of the BofA Corporate Center is great – but not open to the public.

Here’s my list:

3. In line at Price’s Chicken Coop (at left) just after you’ve bought a quarter-dark dinner (or chicken livers) with tater tots and the hot grease is just starting to soak through the cardboard box.

2. The vaulted passage way alongside The Green uptown – one of the best designed spaces in the city. It just makes you feel grand to walk down it. The fans overhead are a nice touch for a hot climate.

1. Inside the First Presbyterian Church sanctuary on the Sunday before Christmas, with the old burnished wood, the royal blue carpets and cushions, as the brass and timpani and cymbals play and everyone is singing “Joy To The World.”

Where’s best place to stand in CLT?

Stumbled on this list of the Best Places To Stand in the US.

Oddly, it doesn’t mention the old abandoned Upton’s near Eastland Mall (above), or anything along Independence Boulevard. Not even a peep about Dee-Dee Harris’ lingering grass-covered crater at Park and Quail Hollow roads.
Or sights from the observation decks atop the bank towers uptown. Oops. There ARE no observation towers. It doesn’t add anything in Charlotte. Hmmm. If only we’d taken the late cartoonist Doug Marlette’s advice and at The Square uptown, instead of those insipid statues, installed the Eternal Barbecue Pit.
My two-cents-worth: The list needs more attention to the North Carolina treasures. Cape Hatteras lighthouse comes in at No. 90. I’d rank it higher than – dare I say it? – Graceland. And definitely above the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, though I confess I haven’t visited that one.
My favorite place to stand in North Carolina: Atop the Art Loeb Trail (the Tennant Mountain peak) near Shining Rock Wilderness, off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Brevard. If you want your heart to expand with gladness that you’re alive, that would be the spot. Another fave is a view from a peak in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.

Homes built, but no street: Did city goof?

What do you do when the developer who built your house goes out of business before he builds the street your house is supposed to sit on?

A group of homeowners caught in this mess wants the city to help them get their street built. (It probably doesn’t hurt their ability to get the city’s attention that they’ve hired former Mayor Richard Vinroot to be their attorney.)

Deputy City Manager Ron Kimble gave City Council a briefing Monday night. Some of the homeowners were in the audience. The street was to be an extension of Wright Avenue, which now dead-ends at a creek. The houses are near the Lomax Avenue entrance to the Charlotte Swim & Racquet Club off Sharon-Amity Road. Seven houses are built and have been sold. They have an alley in back, and they can roll their garbage bins to Lomax Avenue. The folks living there say their addresses are on Wright Avenue (the phonebook confirms this), and that GPS shows the street having been built. That tends to confuse the police and FedEx. They worry about whether emergency services could find them quickly in the event of a fire, crime or health problem.

But because the subdivision was laid out before the city’s subdivision ordinance was adopted, Kimble said, it didn’t fall under the ordinance’s rules, and the builder, Mick El-Massri, didn’t have to put up a street bond – to ensure the street got built. Now, the developer has defaulted and may be facing bankruptcy, Kimble said. (Locust Lumber Co. now owns some of the unsold property, but a court records search finds dozens of civil suits but no bankruptcy filing for the developer.) The houses are built – and there’s no street.

A second clump of houses by the same developer, Mick El-Massri, sits on another section of unbuilt Wright Avenue off the dead end of Delane. Lisa Hunter, who’s lived in one of the streetless houses for almost three years, said the developer had told her he was going to use the money from selling two of those empty houses to finally build their street. But the city wouldn’t issue a certificate of occupancy – because there was no street built.

I went for a look after the council meeting. The situation is, truly, a mess. Multiple property owners are affected. The city’s street policies call for Wright Avenue to connect over the creek, which will drive up the cost of building it. But the homeowners prefer that to a dead end, they say.

“It was in our contract that the road would be built within a year,” Stacey Searson said. She and her husband Tom have been there about 2 1/2 years. “We thought we were legally protected.”

City officials said they’ll look into the quickest way to get the street built, and into preventing this situation from happening again. Indeed. Here’s the scary part: Kimble said there are little infill lots all over the city that might fall into this same Catch 22.

Developer to chair planning commission

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission on Monday elected developer Stephen Rosenburgh succeed Dave Howard as chair, starting July 1.

Rosenburgh – president and CEO of US Land Investments, which does work throughout the Southeast United States – grew up in Toronto and lived there until moving to Charlotte 16 years ago. His company Web site says he founded Jordan Homes, and some of his projects included Carrington, The Greens at Birkdale, Legend Oaks and Stonebridge. He has also been on the N.C. Banking Commission.

I called Rosenburgh to set up an interview but he demurred. He said he doesn’t want to talk about chairing the planning commission until Howard’s term ends, and until he’s had a chance to talk to Planning Director Debra Campbell and until after he returns from an August vacation.

The planning commission is a 14-member advisory body which, among other things, recommends to the City Council whether to approve or reject rezoning proposals. It has a history of being developer-friendly: Of its current members, at least eight work in real estate, development or construction. That may change as new appointees are named, but for at least the past 15 years typically half or more of its members have made their livelihoods working in real estate and development.

Howard, who is running for City Council this fall, is vice president for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, a nonprofit group that develops affordable housing, sometimes in partnership with other developers.

Slack DOT care may worsen flooding

Since we’re expecting heavy rain, what are the chances Charlotte’s streets will flood? Pretty high, especially since a good many storm drains on our streets have been clogged with debris since the last heavy rain – or even longer.

The photo above is a drain on a city-maintained street near where I live. It has been clogged with debris for weeks (maybe months, I only noticed it after the recent flooding). Its inability to drain is one reason a nearby low spot on Wendover Road collects water during heavy rains, often putting a lane on Wendover under water. And the drains along Wendover itself are, if anything, even more clogged.
I asked Charlotte DOT director Danny Pleasant recently about the clogged drains. He said his department clears them and to report clogged drains on the city’s 311 phone line. (I confess I haven’t called 311 about the drain in the photo; I wanted to see if it would get cleaned anyhow. It hasn’t.) Update: I got a call about 4 p.m. from the city’s solid waste services department. It cleans the tops of drains, and CDOT cleans the underneath and the catch basins. I suspect the drain in the photo above will be cleaned by tomorrow morning. We’ll see.
But Wendover, Pleasant said, is state-“maintained” (quote marks mine). I wonder how many years it has been since the state has cleaned Wendover or its drains.
Note this photo of dirt in the Wendover gutters. The dirt is so deep the weeds are, in some spots, knee high. The state’s road maintenance efforts are, well, the best word is slovenly. Is it this bad in other N.C. cities? Readers in Asheville, Greensboro, Raleigh, etc., are state-maintained roads in your city similarly clogged with years of dirt and debris?
I will note, however, that homeowners who aren’t keen on flooded streets could always clean the storm drains in front of their houses and dig the dirt from the gutters.
Where does the dirt come from? Some of it’s yard-care debris that’s blown into the street (How about telling your landscapers to stop that?) and some is from construction sites, where contractors break the erosion laws and let soil run off into streets and creeks – the largest cause of water pollution. The gutter near the storm drain in the photo above is 3 inches deep in sandy sedimentation from two construction sites up the hill.

This meeting is adjourned

You be the judge. Was Mayor Pat McCrory unnecessarily curt, or avoiding a politically sticky situation or just being time-efficient after a long meeting Monday night, when a delegation from the gay/lesbian alliance appeared before Charlotte City Council?

Here’s the background: The council’s 5 p.m. dinner meeting was to be followed by a Citizens Forum, a regular event where the council hears from the public but doesn’t take action or engage in much discussion, though upon occasion a council member will ask questions or make comments. Only one speaker had signed up, a man from Durham.

He turned out to be Joshua Lee Weaver, accompanied by a dozen or so local folks from Charlotte’s gay and lesbian community. He sought the council’s approval of “A Resolution in Support of Civil Marriage for Same-Sex Couples.” (He must have had Charlotte confused with Chapel Hill or something.) With his allotted 4 minutes at the microphone, he asked for their support and read the resolution.

When Weaver finished, Mayor McCrory said quickly: “Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned.” And council members began packing up. Weaver said something like, “Well, I was hoping for some feedback.” McCrory said he appreciated him being here, but didn’t comment on the substance of the proposal.

Afterward, Weaver said two municipalities had passed the resolution already – Chapel Hill and Carrboro – and Durham was considering it. He said other cities would be asked to pass it but wasn’t sure which he’d approach next.

Observer reporter Julia Oliver asked McCrory after the meeting if he’d put the resolution on the agenda and McCrory said he wouldn’t.

To be fair, McCrory and several council members afterward did go speak to Weaver afterward, and to some in the group accompanying him. I noticed Susan Burgess and Anthony Foxx, and there may have been others. Council member Andy Dulin sent a letter to the Observer today saying he doesn’t support civil unions – “One man, one woman is what I believe” – and noting that none of the seven Democrats at the table said a word to Weaver. He’s right. Of course, the mayor closed the meeting before anyone had time to say a peep.

Stimulus bucks? Tar Heels get hosed

Want to get mad? Here’s a good one for you:

A USA Today analysis of where stimulus money has gone so far, compared to unemployment rates, shows North Carolina (jobless rate 10.8 percent, among the nation’s highest), is getting way below its per capita share of stimulus money. Here’s a link to the article.

Here’s the telling paragraph: ” … the first contracts [for spending stimulus money] have amounted to only about $7.42 per person on average in the eight states with unemployment rates higher than 10% last month. By comparison, government records show it has awarded about $26 worth of contracts per person in North Dakota, whose unemployment rate is the nation’s lowest.”

The nationwide average is $13 per person, the story says. In North Carolina, the figure was only $1.56 per capita.

No wonder we’re laying off teachers and gutting our colleges and universities. You’d think President Obama would be a tad more grateful for his much-touted victory here last November.

Even South Carolina, where Gov. Mark Sanford is trying his best to stop incoming stimulus money despite its 11.5 percent jobless rate, got $81.34 per capita. Sanford must not be trying hard enough.

Blue Line or Green Line?

Should the existing Blue Line be renamed the Green Line, to please UNCC? Tomorrow the Metropolitan Transit Commission takes up the discussion at its 5:30 p.m. meeting. Here’s a link to the meeting agenda.

At first, it sounds like an easy and simple decision: The transit line that’s planned to run from uptown to UNC Charlotte should be the Green Line, to reflect the 49ers school colors.

But with transit – and transportation in general – things are rarely as simple as you’d think. Here’s the biggest sticking point: The new line will be a continuation of the existing Blue Line. That is, you could hop on at I-485 outside Pineville and ride all the way to beyond UNCC.

There’s already been significant investment in “Blue.” Even the train cars are blue, not to mention the signs, etc.

As CATS officials note, they couldn’t find any other transit system that “changed colors midstream” (hmmm, interesting turn of phrase). It might well confuse riders. I mean, we’re not talking a lot of riders here with New York-caliber subway expertise (where one line simultaneously might have two numbers or letters or colors, and you have to notice whether you’re hopping on a local or an express route, for instance). Starting on the blue line and ending on the green line might be as confusing as starting out on Woodlawn and, without turning, finding yourself on Runnymede and then Sharon Road then Wendover, and then Eastway. Or maybe Tyvola to Fairview to Sardis to Rama. Or … well, I could go on but I won’t.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, a Blue-to-Green Line transit corridor fits right in. How very Charlotte.

Agriburbia? Tell that to Detroit

My earlier posting on “agriburbia” – saying “Agriculture is the new golf” and reporting on an in-the-works development near here that will feature farm fields instead of a golf course or – brought an e-mail with this link to a story from the online Detroit Free Press.

It seems some visiting urban planners, noting the enlarging areas of disinvestment in the Motor City, have proposed that eventually the city will resemble clusters of villages surrounded by farmlands. Back to the future, indeed.

Does anyone know of any urban land that has successfully reverted to farmland?

I asked a soil specialist some years back about the feasibility of turning abandoned big-box stores and their huge parking lots back into farmland and was told that, unfortunately, the development scrapes away the topsoil, which takes centuries to create. Maybe with enough chickens and livestock one could replenish the soil?

‘Agriculture is the new golf’

The latest career advice, I hear, isn’t “plastics.” It’s “agriburbia.”

A developer-land planner-type pulled me aside this week to talk about his newest project: A development, in the general vicinity of Kannapolis-Salisbury, that they’re dubbing “agriburbia.” It’s a residential development but instead of common open space and big lawns, they’ll have a civic farm, land leased to a farmer. There will be do-it-yourself options for backyard gardeners. They’ll market it, he said, to people affiliated with the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis – the health-and-wellness related research operation.

The term “agriburbia,” he said, was coined by a guy in Colorado. Sure enough, here’s the Web site. “Agriburbia” is even trademarked. But it’s such a great word it may have a life of its own, like “locavore.” Its slogan: “Growing Sustainable Communities by the Bushel!” Its goal: “the re-integration of food production directly within the living environment … by focusing on agriculture as the centerpiece of both new and existing communities.”

This dovetails with a talk in Charlotte last fall by New Urbanism godfather Andres Duany, about what he termed “agricultural urbanism.” It was Duany who quipped “agriculture is the new golf.” By that, he meant an activity and marketing point for developments.

“Only 17 percent of people living in golf course communities play golf more than once a year,” Duany said. “Why not grow food? By the way, food is very good-looking.” (I wonder if Duany, an urbane Miamian, has ever seen fading tomato plants at the end of a hot, aphid-ridden summer, or squash plants wilting from vine borer assaults. But I digress.)

Duany suggested the $40 billion that Americans spend on lawn care might be better diverted to food production. And this may be the biggest eyebrow-raiser, coming from a devoted urbanist devoted it to agriculture: “The large lot (as in large-lot suburbia) can be justified primarily as the making of food.” When Duany is trying to justify large-lot suburbia, you know the world is changing.

Being Andres Duany, he even came up with a “transect” (translation: context-appropriate designs) for agriculture in a range of conditions from rural (your basic farms, with farming village clusters) to center city (container gardens on terraces and rooftops). His transect has specific allowances for how many chickens are allowed – though no cluckers in the most dense urban neighborhoods. If memory serves, you can’t have a rooster unless you’re in one of the more rural zones in his transect. Whatever.

The local developers said they’ll be going public in a few weeks. Theirs isn’t “agricultural urbanism,” they said, but suburbia with farms instead of big lawns. Stay tuned.