Category: Charlotte City Council

From old Reid’s to new farmers market

Charlotte City Council, at its dinner meeting before the regular council meeting that is happening in front of me now, heard a request for up to $1 million from Charlotte Center City Partners to do the construction work to turn the former Reid’s Fine Foods grocery into an uptown farmers market.

Center City Partners, a nonprofit tax-funded group that represents uptown and South End, has sponsored an uptown market for 12 years, but it’s outdoor at The Square, small and from what I can tell of the good sold, not what I’d consider “local” produce. CCCP has wanted a better site for a larger market.

I hate to do this to you, but all I’ve time for now is to copy/paste the CCCP press release, for those who want more details. The council is now starting to hear public comments on the proposed tougher tree ordinance and I need to listen to that.

On the market proposal, the council voted to sent it to the economic development committee for a recommendation. Council members Andy Dulin, Michael Barnes and Edwin Peacock III voted against sending it to committee.

Press release:
Charlotte Center City Partners is exploring the creation of a new public market in Uptown to be located in the former Reid’s Fine Foods space on the ground floor of the Seventh Street Station parking deck. Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) has offered to invest in this new market because of the project’s potential benefits for the citizens of our region.

The proposed ‘City Market’, situated adjacent to the 7th Street light rail station, would feature high quality, unique products sold at reasonable prices. Produce and products from local farmers and vendors would support public health by providing year-round access to fresh foods. The vendor mix is proposed to be multicultural and represent Charlotte’s global melting pot as well as its Southern heritage. The market would include a café and provide programming opportunities for the community to learn about healthy eating in a warm and inviting setting, surrounded by fresh foods.

“Our goal will be to provide a wide variety of produce, meat, fish, bakery and dairy products, and other raw and prepared food, brought to market in the center of the city by farmers, growers, producers and chefs,” said Michael Smith, President and CEO of Charlotte Center City Partners. “We want to create an environment that recognizes and celebrates the diversity of our citizens and fosters their interaction. We also want to strengthen the historic link and mutual dependency of our rural and urban communities.”

The market will take advantage of its Uptown location and the City’s unique assets including the light rail line, the new UNC Charlotte building and First Ward Park across the street as well as Johnson & Wales University.

Another objective will be to provide an incubator for small businesses, supported by the workforce development programs at CPCC. In time, this market will become a ‘must see’ destination and provide an authentic Charlotte experience for visitors. The hope is to achieve all this and, at the same time, make sure the market is operationally self-funded.

As founding sponsor, CHS would provide health and wellness programming for the market. “We want to invest in the City Market because it supports our mission of ‘Live Well Carolinas’ and our goal of prevention and wellness in the Charlotte community,” said CEO Michael Tarwater.

This concept is the result of years of research and exploration through a partnership with the City, County and Projects for Public Spaces (PPS). In a recently completed feasibility study report, PPS surveyed local market vendors and found a high-capacity, skilled set of vendors who know and understand retail marketing. The survey found that 75% of vendors have a strong interest in participating in a year-round indoor market and that 75% employ 0-3 full-time employees and more than 60% of vendors would be ready to sell in less than three months.

The City Market is proposed to be a stand-alone 501(c) 3 organization employing a Market Manager and Assistant Manager as well as custodial staff. The projected opening is Spring of 2011.

Unlike Charlotte, Durham nixes digital billboards

Just spotted this article in the Raleigh News & Observer – the Durham City Council has turned unanimous thumbs down on a proposal to allow digital billboards.

Interesting. Charlotte, of course, allows them, having voted 8-2 in 2007 (council members Michael Barnes and Warren Turner were the “no” votes) to loosen the city’s already loose billboard standards to allow the large and distracting TV-screen like signs.

The article about Durham says Durham’s “City/County Planning Department recommended against the change in a strongly worded presentation that raised concerns about digital signs as motorist distractions and costly litigation that could be invited by tampering with an ordinance the city has already spent more than $1 million defending against industry challenges.”

Other cities that ban digital billboards include Chapel Hill, Morrisville, Cary and Raleigh.

Unlike Charlotte, Durham nixes digital billboards

Just spotted this article in the Raleigh News & Observer – the Durham City Council has turned unanimous thumbs down on a proposal to allow digital billboards.

Interesting. Charlotte, of course, allows them, having voted 8-2 in 2007 (council members Michael Barnes and Warren Turner were the “no” votes) to loosen the city’s already loose billboard standards to allow the large and distracting TV-screen like signs.

The article about Durham says Durham’s “City/County Planning Department recommended against the change in a strongly worded presentation that raised concerns about digital signs as motorist distractions and costly litigation that could be invited by tampering with an ordinance the city has already spent more than $1 million defending against industry challenges.”

Other cities that ban digital billboards include Chapel Hill, Morrisville, Cary and Raleigh.

Streetcar, more tree protection before City Council today

City Council members today get to deal with some controversial stuff. At tonight’s 6:30 p.m. meeting they’re to vote on whether to accept the $25 million federal grant to start building a streetcar line. At their 5 p.m. dinner meeting they’ll hear a briefing on the controversial tree ordinance revisions, five years in the making. And at a 3:30 p.m. committee meeting, the panel will hear about the controversial urban street design guidelines, which have been in the works for eight years. (Memo to government staff: If you have the temerity to propose something developers don’t like, be prepared to spend many, many years on it.)

For all you local government aficionados, here’s a link to what the council will be asked to vote on for the streetcar. And here’s a link to two pro-con pieces that ran Saturday on the Observer’s op-ed page, from council members Edwin Peacock III (he’s voting no, he says) and David Howard (why he’ll vote yes). And here’s what the Observer’s editorial board said about the streetcar on July 18, in “Streetcar is sound strategy, not silly frill.”

Tree ordinance: At its 5 p.m. dinner meeting the council’s to be briefed on the proposed strengthening of the city’s tree ordinance – the part of the ordinance that applies to commercial development, including multifamily housing, but not the part for single-family subdivisions. Just to show you how things work, here’s a list of the members of the stakeholder committee that has been hashing out the tree ordinance for FIVE YEARS.

I’ve put in red the members who represent developers or businesses whose major clients are developers. (Granted, just because you get paid by developers, or are one, it doesn’t mean you’re not sometimes environmentally minded. But I’m just saying.) I’m not sure how to categorize Henry Wallace from Duke Power, a utility company. It’s a subsidiary of Duke Energy, which also co-owns Crescent Resources, which was a major developer around here until it had to file for bankruptcy.

I’ve put in blue the members who are government staff, and therefore are expected to be responsive to ALL members of the public, i.e. not say things that may tick off developers.

In green are the stakeholder members who aren’t affiliated with the real estate and development industry and aren’t local government staff.

Don McSween (City Arborist), Mary Stauble (Mecklenburg County Solid Waste), Lisa Hagood (ESP Associates, Designer), Lee McLaren (DPR Associates, Subdivision Steering Committee), Henry Wallace (Duke Power, Utilities), Tim Morgan/Andy Munn (REBIC, Home Builders Association), Bob Miller (Camas Associates, Architect), John Porter (Charter Properties, Developer/ Charlotte Apartment Association), Chris Buchanan (Moore & Van Allen, Tree Advisory Committee), Rick Roti (Sierra Club), Christa Rodgers (Parks and Recreation).

Even more revealing is to check out the cost-benefit analysis subgroup, whose mission was to apply the proposed changes to some development sites to see how much they might add to the cost of development. (It’s amazing anyone was left at the Crosland or Childress Klein offices while this group was meeting):

Jon Morris (Beacon Partners), Clifton Coble(Bissell Development), Chris Kirby (Carlson Real Estate), Tom Lannin(Chestnut Consulting), Tricia Noble (Childress Klein), Sue Freyler(Cole Jenest & Stone), Bill Daleure (Crosland), Mike Wiggins(Crosland),Scott Henson (Crosland), Steve Mauldin(Crosland), Ju-Ian Shen (Design Resource Group), Al Harris (LSG), Debra Glennon (LSG), Jay Banks(Kimley-Horn), Ed Schweitzer (Land Design), Jeff Orsborn (OSG), Kavita Gupta (Perkins and Will) ,Brandon Plunkett(The John R. McAdams Co), Brian Crutchfield (Timmons Group), Terry Brennan (Trinity Partners), Paul Devine (Childress Klein), Landon Wyatt (Childress Klein), David Haggart (Childress Klein),Chris Daly (Childress Klein),
Trey Dempsey (Lincoln Harris).

Does it make sense to have plenty of site-plan, run-the-numbers expertise on a cost-benefit analysis group? Of course. But if you’ve ever wondered why run-of-the-mill Charlotteans think the city’s government processes are dominated by developers, that’s why.

Street designs: At 3:30 p.m. today the council’s Transportation and Planning Committee (David Howard, Patsy Kinsey, Warren Cooksey and Michael Barnes) hears presentations on the Urban Street Design Guidelines, and the Centers Corridors & Wedges Growth Framework. The committee is being asked to make a recommendation to the full council on the CC&W Framework. If you haven’t heard much about it, you’re not alone. It’s not been getting many headlines. Probably because it doesn’t really change things very much. Or if it does, I haven’t been able to find that section in it.

The street design guidelines have been controversial. Developers (who’ll have to pay to put more streets and sidewalks into their developments, which takes away from developable land) contend the street requirement will raise costs. They’ve also acquired a sudden concern for storm water runoff (a concern they didn’t seem to feel very powerfully when the city and county were trying to adopt watershed protections and floodplain regulations in the 1990s) and they’re noting that all those sidewalks and extra streets will create more impervious surfaces. As if all the rooftops and driveways and surface parking lots they’re building don’t.

Short block lengths are a huge help to people trying to get around the city on foot. The city’s attempt to shrink the allowable block lengths in its new development is admirable. Further, the USDG policy that was adopted in 2007 already compromised the transportation experts’ earlier proposal, after developers complained. Here’s hoping the City Council, as it deals with the staff’s current project to codify the policy into the local ordinances, doesn’t force yet another “compromise” of the already compromised guidelines.

Here’s a link to the PowerPoint presentations that show the Centers Corridors & Wedges Growth Framework, and to the Urban Street Design Guidelines.

Parking decks coming to your neighborhood?

Central Piedmont Community College deck at Seventh and Charlottetowne has angered the Elizabeth neighborhood

Although the 9-1 vote (Warren Cooksey voted no) creating the Wilmore Historic District was the biggest headline out of the City Council’s Monday night meeting, the most interesting discussion took place around a somewhat obscure proposal from the city planning staff.
Several council members appeared to think the provision would allow parking decks in residential areas where they are now barred. (For the record, this is not what it would do, as you’ll see if you read on.)
But you can’t blame people for some confusion. The measure was on the agenda as a public hearing on Petition No. 2010-033, described this way in the lovable language of the planners: “… a text amendment to add new regulations making parking decks constructed as an accessory use to an institutional use exempt from the floor area ratio (FAR) standards, when located in the single family and multi-family zoning districts, provided certain requirements are met …”

The exemption from FAR standards (don’t even ask, I have been writing about planning for 15 years and I’m still not totally clear how FAR works) is intended to offer an incentive to institutions such as churches, colleges and hospitals to build parking decks instead of surface parking lots – in areas where the decks are already allowed but because of the FAR standards they’re more expensive to build. And with the appearance requirements, such as plantings, the decks would look a wee bit better, too.

“I have a problem with parking decks in residential districts,” at-large council member Susan Burgess said.

Planner Tom Drake, who was at the microphone: “This is not a precedent here.”

Burgess (incredulous tone): “In R-3 and R-4, surface parking and parking decks are permitted?”

Drake: “Yes.”

Burgess: “How did that happen?”

Drake: “They’re accessory uses.”

Burgess: “Has that always been the case?”

Drake: Yes, in my 20 years here (I paraphrased his lengthier reply. Meanwhile, Planning Director Debra Campbell and planner Sandy Montgomery, sitting in the audience, nod vigorously.)

Of course, if you’ve gone past Carolinas Medical Center or numerous large churches or Queens University (fixed from “College”) in the past 10 years you’ll see plenty of large parking lots and decks built in residential areas. Heck, CMC owns huge chunks of the Dilworth neighborhood and it isn’t likely they’re going to get deeply into the real estate business, but rather they’re going to build more medical facilities with vast parking facilities.

Parking is a huge dilemma for Charlotte and most other cities. No one likes a parking lot next door, but get us into our cars and we LOVE parking places. (See my recent column on the topic.) What this provision would do, if it works as intended, would encourage those institutions to build vertically instead of spreading asphalt across three or four times the land area a deck would cover. Sounds like a good idea. Assuming everyone can figure out what it means …

Fear and loathing at City Hall, redux

I’ve had some VERY interesting reactions to my Saturday op-ed, reflecting on the Warren Turner non-censure vote. I told of a couple of instances long ago in which male colleagues had been inappropriate, either to me or others. I never reported them, I wrote, in part because that was an era when people really didn’t talk about “sexual harassment” as something you should complain about.

I also wrote, “Not reporting things is not unusual. Why didn’t I report Mr. Trashmouth Reporter? Why didn’t I speak up, years later, when a male politician casually and briefly dropped a hand on my thigh at a dinner? I guess I didn’t want to make a scene. I told a friend. She revealed that the same fellow had, in the guise of a hug, groped her. (For the record, it was not Warren Turner.)”

As you’d expect, I got some e-mails and phone calls in response. Most of the ones from women recounted experiences they’d had in which male co-workers, bosses or colleagues made their workplace uncomfortable.

Two off-the-record accounts came from women whom I’ve always thought of as taking no guff – the kind you’d think would have told the men to knock it off or they’d be missing key body parts. They told of thoroughly inappropriate remarks or even fending off men whose names you’d recognize. Neither ever reported it, or directly confronted the men. Why not? They just didn’t want to make a scene, they said.

The e-mails were interesting as well. Several from men expressed skepticism that the harassment truly occurred or was really anything more than clumsy attempts at flirtation. Here’s what one man wrote:
“Women in the workplace are exposing themselves more and more. … skirts with high, high slits; leg crossings exposing panties and/or the upper thigh. At the water cooler or in the elevator, an attractive man might get a really hard unmistakable breast buried in his … triceps. Or a woman will bend over facing him, showing how loose her bra fits and a whole lot of her anatomy. I can understand how some men interpret that conduct as an invitation … . Sexual harassment is a two-way street. Women should hold their exposure and their pressing of breasts on men for their husbands at home, etc., not at work.” (Never mind that neither I nor the women I knew whom I wrote about had dressed in those ways.)

The women’s e-mails were more sobering. Here’s one: “I’ve been in the same job for 21 yrs and always “1 rung below” in the pecking order of the same guy all these years. I’ve put up with exactly what you talked about – for 20 yrs. Nothing has changed for women really today. The same guy has been in trouble numerous times. Nothing ever happens to him. Most who did dare to come forward & complain, found themselves laid off or transferred to a lesser paying job. Why come forward if you’ll not be validated or supported by management but rather only made to look like a fool? Certainly, it was never worth it to me.”

Another: “Thank you so much for writing the article regarding sexual harassment. I am a retired teacher who was harassed by a principal along with several other teachers. My reaction was interesting when it first happened. You wonder, was it something I said; was he only kidding; maybe I was overreacting. When it happened again, I began to feel very uncomfortable and threatened. I then made it a point of avoiding his presence whenever possible. Eventually I along with a group of other teachers went before the school board attorney to express our feelings. I was wise enough to take my own attorney along and get in writing that I would not receive any repercussions due to my action. There was never any action taken against the principle but he eventually did lose his job for another infraction not related to the harassment. … I have two daughters in the work force now and they tell me that they have never had a boss who did not harass them in some way. ”

And this, with an interesting suggestion at the end: “You told the situation just like it really is. I know from sad experience. I worked for many years at one of our hospitals as an RN. I was groped by one of the doctors, and then later when I complained to the RN in charge, I was told “this is Dr. M, and we don’t want to upset him, do we?” Several years later, that same doctor made inappropriate remarks when we were on an elevator. I was so dumbfounded that I just looked harshly at him, and got off the elevator at the next stop. I did tell a superior, and she said basically the same thing that the first one had said, that is, leave it alone. I was supporting my family, and needed my job. You can be assured that I stayed far away from that doctor. … Perhaps we need a place where women (and/or men) can go to report inappropriate happenings. It would be ideal if there could be some sort of a committee which could listen, and then weigh the situation to see what could be done about it.”

So fellas, here’s a lesson for you. You may not be making smarmy remarks about body parts or your sexual prowess to your female co-workers, but some men do. You may not be groping your female colleagues, but some other men are. Most men behave themselves. A few don’t. When the women try to report these things, please try to believe them. A small percentage may be making things up, but it’s more likely that they are telling the truth. Even if it’s about your fraternity brother – or your fellow City Council member.

The sad secret behind Charlotte plans

Just got back from a City Council committee meeting where that darn Michael Barnes – the District 4 representative who is running for district attorney – kept asking some impertinent questions.

The topic at hand was a draft of the Catawba Area Plan, which the planners are working on to address an area in the west of part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, up next to the Catawba River and north of I-85. Part of the plan’s aim, it says, is to encourage “developments that are compatible with the surrounding natural environment” and to “integrate environmentally sensitive design elements” by incorporating natural features, minimizing paved surfaces, “preserving and creating open space and greenways” and using green design to try to reduce storm water runoff. Excellent goals, to be sure.

Barnes asked the planner, Alberto Gonzalez, to describe what the city’s doing to encourage developers to save more trees and for open space protection. Gonzalez replied that they’d encourage cluster development, where a developer puts houses closer together than usual in order to leave a bigger chunk of undeveloped land in a subdivision.

Barnes: Are we doing anything to increase the tree save on the interior of a development?
Gonzalez: The plan encourages developers to save more trees. … “There’s only so much we can go in terms of requirements.”

After some more back and forth about the proposed revisions to the city’s tree ordinance (the revisions are for commercial, not residential development) and the tree canopy study the council heard about last week (see report here, starting on page 72, see my recent posting here, and see editorial here) Barnes pointed out, ” ‘encouraging’ clearly doesn’t work.”

What he was getting at what this simple reality that many people don’t understand. Charlotte’s plans and policies talk a lot about the need to be environmentally sensitive, or pedestrian-friendly, or any of a number of other laudable goals. They have absolutely no teeth.

What has the teeth are the ordinances – the subdivision ordinance, the tree ordinance, the zoning ordinance, and so on. Until those ordinances require what the planners say they are “encouraging” then we don’t get much of it.

Yes, the planners “encourage” developers to do things during the rezoning process. But remember, approximately 75 percent of residential development here doesn’t go through any rezoning. And remember, too, that every rezoning, even those that are in direct conflict with any area plan, automatically “update” the plan. Sweet, eh?

Even the Catawba Area Plan PowerPoint presentation itself noted that in the “summary of citizen concerns” was this: “Need strong tools (regulations) to implement environmental recommendations.” (To see the PowerPoint presentation of the Catawba Area Plan that was given at the meeting, follow this link. To read the draft plan, follow this one.)

“I suggest we should start demanding more, so this city looks the way we want it to in 20 years,” Barnes said.

Spoken like a guy running for countywide office … But that said, he certainly hit on a good point.

Charlotte’s huge tree loss

A report to be given to the City Council on Monday shows that the city has lost half its tree cover since 1985. Read the report here – it starts on page 70 of the pdf.

The county as a whole has lost 33 percent of the tree cover it had in 1985, the report found.
The study is an Urban Ecosystem Analysis, performed with satellite imagery, GIS technology and American Forests’ software. A major grant from The Women’s Impact Fund made it possible, with help from digital imagery provided by Mecklenburg County, and additional funding from the City of Charlotte and the Blumenthal Foundation.

The report notes: “Charlotte Mecklenburg’s tree cover has declined for the last 23 years and new policies and practices will need to emerge to reverse this trend. Based upon this latest data,
tree canopy in Mecklenburg County has reached the point where further decline will cause the County to fall below levels recommended by American Forests. Charlotte Mecklenburg is now at a crossroads that will set the course for environmental quality for decades to come.”

The city and the county must begin counting trees as part of the essential urban infrastructure. Today they don’t.

Yes, any time a city grows into greenfield areas it will lose large tracts of previously undeveloped woods. The problem isn’t that the city has grown, but that it hasn’t grown smartly – meaning that while plenty of land was targeted for development, no land was set aside for non-development. Other cities have done this routinely, through strategic use of water/sewer service and roads/no-roads policies. Many require parkland to be set aside (or a fee in lieu) with each development. This helps make up for the inevitable tree loss when greenfields get developed.

Not here.

REBIC’s long list of ‘No’s’

Several months back I had coffee with the affable Andy Munn, policy director for the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, aka REBIC, the most influential local real estate and development lobbying group. I got the idea that the group, which in the past has had (my words here, not his) a “Just Say No” reputation among local government staffers and environmental and planning activists, might be trying to change its image a bit.

Fast forward to Monday night’s City Council meeting (“Foxx: Be flexible with developers”), where REBIC members were out in force. Mayor Anthony Foxx had put onto the agenda a staff presentation about a cluster of new measures that REBIC doesn’t like:
– the proposed (not yet adopted) stronger tree ordinance.
– the Urban Street Design Guidelines policy (not yet adopted into ordinances and thus, not required of developers, either)
– the post-construction controls ordinance (the only one developers currently must actually follow). Many big guns were in attendance: Bill Daleure of Crosland Inc., Ned Curran of the Bissell Companies, as well as Charlotte Chamber honcho Bob Morgan.

As the Observer editorial board opined this morning (“Don’t let ‘flexible’ morph into ‘gutting’ “) just building cheap isn’t always smart. When you add in the future costs to taxpayers to retrofit and expand your street network/restore polluted streams/mitigate flooding — i.e. millions of dollars — it makes the estimated increment of $1,900 to $2,900 to the cost of new housing (spread over a 30-year mortgage) seem a bit less of a problem.

That said, a city that didn’t look seriously at the combined effects of its regulations on the costs of building would be irresponsible. The point is to look at the big picture and make intelligent choices, as best you can. Further, I hear developers of all types, not just the REBIC types, complain about bureaucratic nightmares dealing with multiple government agencies on complicated plans and technical issues. So complaints about lack of flexibility and/or inconsistencies resonate with me.

But here’s a problem: Even when REBIC has legitimate points it’s virtually impossible to sort them out from the cloud of anti-everything rhetoric it’s been floating for something like 30 years.

I recall a famous scene when then-REBIC executive director Mark Cramer spoke at a City Council debate in 1998 over whether to require developers to build more sidewalks in new subdivisions. Of course REBIC opposed it, because it would force developers to spend more money on subdivisions. (Though I must say I doubt they had to shrink their profit margins.) Cramer, after listening to pleas for good sidewalks on behalf of children, the elderly and people in wheelchairs, noted that sidewalks are good things. But, he added: “You can have too much of a good thing.”

I think REBIC and its close relative, the Chamber’s land use committee, would have more credibility in many of its complaints if it hadn’t, over the years, fought virtually every environmental and growth-management measure proposed by local governments, dating to before the term Smart Growth was even invented.

It’s a long list. It includes: the city bicycle plan, the floodplain ordinance, the stream buffer ordinance, watershed ordinances, the aforementioned sidewalk requirements, a county farmland preservation measure, a pilot project in Huntersville to preserve rural land and efforts a few decades ago to channel the overdevelopment in South Charlotte into other areas by limiting where new sewer lines are built. (That last is a classic planning technique being used all over the country – but not in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Developer John Crosland Jr. simply got state government to give him permits for private sewer plants and kept on building subdivisions.)

Quite an impressive list of opposition, I’d say. And to be fair I will note that anyone is free to lobby any elected official on anything. When environmental regulations and planning initiatives are gutted or stalled for years, and when city staff is ordered to “compromise with developers” over already-compromised proposals – a tradition staffers hired from other metro areas have told me privately they’re shocked to hear here – it’s elected officials who do that, not REBIC.

1977 Charlotte plan – Back to the future?

From the files of things I found looking up other things:

I was leafing through the dusty old reports my former colleague Tom Bradbury bequeathed, in hopes of finding when Park Road was four-laned, before writing our editorial opinion in the trees vs. sidewalk flap. (I shall note that from what I can tell, most readers prefer the trees.)

The stack of old reports even includes the 1960 Wilbur Smith and Associates “Charlotte Metropolitan Area: A Master Highway Transportation Plan.” Cool. Someday I’ll read it more thoroughly.

But it was in the 1977 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Thoroughfare Plan, prepared by H.J. “Herman” Hoose, transportation planning coordinator, and W.E. McIntyre, director of the Planning Commission, that I found some interesting recommendations.

They’re taken from the 1995 Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 1975. You be the judge of how well Charlotte-Mecklenburg followed those 1975 recommendations (bold-face emphasis mine, in case you are missing the sarcasm):

• To meet the needs of a diverse population, plan for different types and densities of housing in all areas of the community through carefully controlled implementation procedures.
• Plan for all types of services, commercial, governmental and other needs, through carefully controlled implementation procedures to minimize the impact on the land. These to be provided in convenient proximity to residential communities.
• Plan for a more efficient transportation system; for a more equal balance between auto travel and mass transit opportunities.
• Plan for more parks and open spaces to enhance the visual and physical environment of the community.
• Plan for high visual quality of suburban growth with higher density uses located and designed to support mass transit.

Hmmm. About those parks: I heard once that the City of Charlotte went for something like 75 years without buying land for a single park. Not until city and county park departments were combined in the 1990s were any new parks created inside the city. A shout-out to those decades of City Council members throughout the 20th century whose legacies include a sadly park-poor city.

A quick bit of research in the Observer’s archives found this from a 1985 article by then-Observer reporter Mae Israel (who’s moved back to Charlotte after years at the Washington Post, for those of you who remember her). The piece is about 1985 city candidates’ support (or lack of it) for a 2005 plan.

“One policy in the 1995 Plan encouraged city council members to clip the spread of restaurants, car washes and convenience stores along busy streets by denying rezoning requests.
For the most part, they didn’t do it. Albemarle Road in east Charlotte, for instance, now is lined with commercial development and choked by traffic. … (Remember, this was written in 1985.)
“The plan’s centerpiece policy called for encouraging metropolitan service centers, or urban villages, to slow suburban sprawl. Concentrating public services, homes and businesses was expected to ease traffic congestion and strain on utilities.
“Politicians never directed city staffers to develop strategies for starting such centers, and the sprawl continued, mostly in southeast Charlotte. “

Of course, I can’t be too negative. After all, in 1994 (a short 19 years after the 1975 plan) Charlotte City Council adopted a “Centers and Corridors” concept – not an adopted plan, certainly nothing as specific as actual zoning standards. Since 2008, an effort to update that concept and create more specific policies has been ongoing on in the Planning Department. It hasn’t been adopted yet.

I think it takes a heap of patience to be a city planner here.