Category: demolitions

‘Charlotte doesn’t have a brand’? Here’s an idea

The famed Excelsior Club, possibly to be demolished, in keeping with local tradition. Photo courtesy Dan Morrill

Even in the chest-pumping venues of deep-booster Charlotte, an inkling of the problem sometimes creeps in. Janet LaBar, the new CEO of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance even said it out loud in an interview with the Charlotte Observer. “I think Charlotte doesn’t have a brand,” she told reporter Deon Roberts.

The comment came up today at a regular weekly rump session over eggs, biscuits, livermush and bacon with a group of mostly long-time Charlotte residents, several of them Charlotte natives. I recalled the one-time civic discussion of a possible monument at The Square, the symbolic heart of the city at Trade and Tryon uptown. There was a time when folks were trying to figure out what could be an image that would capture the city’s essence. The late Doug Marlette, then the Observer’s editorial cartoonist, proposed an Eternal Barbecue Pit. Of course, other N.C. barbecue fans noted that Charlotte was famed, not for barbecue, but for being a place without authentic N.C. barbecue joints. Whatever.

What got put up at The Square was four didactic, symbolic statues representing Commerce, Industry, Transportation, and The Future. Visiting poet Andrei Codrescu once described them on NPR as Socialist-Realist and noted that the gold nuggets pouring on a symbolic banker’s head looked like turds.

And there’s a nice old-fashioned-looking clock in a small park on one corner. That park is modeled on the terrain of the Pacific Northwest, or maybe it was the Appalachian mountains – neither of them exactly representative of Charlotte’s terrain. It was built after the city used eminent domain to take and demolish the only antebellum store buildings uptown, which were offering not a heavily symbolic statue but actual Commerce.

Which leads me to the idea our rump session this morning devised. Because when asked, what iconic image does “Charlotte” bring to mind, people said: There isn’t one because Charlotte tears everything down.

After discussion digressed for a short time into various houses folks had owned and raised kids in only to see new owners tear them down for bigger houses, the idea emerged organically. The iconic image of Charlotte is of buildings being torn down.

Hence this modest proposal: Create a monument to Charlotte that is a building. It might be a small model of a historic building that should have been preserved. Maybe the Hotel Charlotte. Maybe the Independence Building. Maybe the Masonic Temple. I hope the Excelsior Club does not join this list.

Then every year on the city’s birthday, the model building is demolished. A new one goes in its place. It will last one year, and then, with pomp and ritual, it too is demolished. And so on. Erasing the past, year after year after year.

Charlotte’s lost old buildings may be costlier than we thought

Where a historic-district house once stood, in Dilworth

It’s sadly coincidental that this week, I went out to snap a photo of the lot where a vintage 1920s house in Dilworth has been demolished, just a few days after I read this article in the New York Times. The Times piece, “Urban Renewal, No Bulldozer: San Francisco repurposes old for the future,” describes how it’s San Francisco’s older buildings downtown that are luring the tech firms that so many cities – including Charlotte – hope to attract.

Charlotte’s Dilworth neighborhood is a turn-of-the-last-century streetcar suburb built a mile from the city’s uptown in an era when that was the edge of town. The section where the house was demolished is a local historic district. (This PlanCharlotte article describes growing discontent among some Dilworthians with the way that district has been managed over the past decade.)

In North Carolina, buildings in local historic districts can be demolished, as can local historic landmarks. The law says that if a city or county has a local historic district or landmarks ordinance, an appointed commission can delay
demolition by up to a year. That’s what the Historic District Commission did for the Dilworth house. But it’s a hot neighborhood, with numerous tear-downs of older, smaller homes being replaced by much larger, grander homes.

An aside: Don’t complain that the neighbors who don’t like the demolitions are just density-fighting NIMBYs. No increased density is being created here, just more impervious surface.

The sad irony is that because Charlotte’s civic personality has never valued older buildings, the city’s uptown has hardly any of those old buildings that in San Francisco are being upfitted. They’ve all been demolished because local development policies,shaped in large part by builders of tall office towers, never pushed for policies that would have better protected some of the older, smaller buildings: height limits, for instance, in parts of uptown, and restrictions on surface parking lots.

If you want to look for tech firms and start-ups that like the funky older buildings, you can visit uptown’s Packard Place, but in general you’ll have to widen your search far beyond uptown. Look to the old, industrial fringes of South End. Look along North Tryon Street and into Optimist Park, Belmont and Villa Heights, just north of the I-277 freeway loop, as well as up North Davidson Street. Look at the Plaza-Central business district, and beyond. Cast an eye on the city’s smaller, overlooked spots. That’s where those valued old building remain.

But with so little protection from city policy, will those spots remain? And it’s sadly ironic that Dilworth – the first of the city’s once-fading close-in neighborhoods to rebuild itself with 1970s urban pioneers – is now being devoured with demolitions.

Threats to historic buildings – from the government

The owner of the landmark P&N Railway Depot (above) wants to demolish it rather than meet city’s code demands.

You may have read the op-ed I did in November (“City may seek landmark demolition”), pointing to an unintended consequence of the city’s new non-residential building code – several demolition orders going out to designated historic landmarks that weren’t in good repair.

Or maybe you caught the WFAE report last week on the Davis General Merchandise store, a century old historic landmark which has been ordered to make repairs, and whose aging outbuildings were ordered demolished if repairs weren’t made.

Yes, this is yet another example of your city government and city elected officials being oblivious to the value of old buildings and historic buildings – and not just landmarks – when they adopt city policy. They’re not necessarily hostile, just oblivious to the issue. Witness the happy ease with which planners and council members adopted zoning standards for transit-station areas that allow buildings so tall they’ll alter the property value landscape, making smaller older buildings in places such as NoDa worth so little compared to the land they’re on that owners won’t even blink before razing them for towers.

As today’s Observer editorial (“Historic landmarks? City turns blind eye”) points out, City Council members say they didn’t even discuss, when talking about the proposed ordinance last spring, what its effect might be on historic buildings. That’s telling.

Walter Abernethy, the city’s code enforcement director, says the issue did come up during stakeholder meetings before the ordinance was proposed. But the ordinance has little in it to protect landmark buildings.

Ted Alexander, with Preservation North Carolina, points out that PNC has covenants on the Davis store to protect it – though whether that could prevent demolition is, for now, an open question. (I’ve asked Ted but haven’t heard back yet.) And it’s important to remember that the city hasn’t ordered demolition of the store and isn’t pushing for it. It just wants repairs, which owner Silas Davis would have to pay for. Davis, when I talked to him Friday, was irate about the whole situation and said he didn’t have the money for the repairs.

But as the editorial points out, it’s the historic old Thrift depot that faces the more immediate threat. Its owner, CSX railway, would prefer not to spend what it would require to bring the building up to code. It’s asking for a demolition permit. Because it’s a landmark, the county historic landmarks commission can delay the demo for up to a year, but can’t prevent demolition.

A few N.C. municipalities have gotten special legislation to let them absolutely forbid demolition in some selected cases. New Bern, for instance, can forbid demolition in its historic districts, although there are some procedural hoops everyone has to jump through.

Is the city’s oblivion toward historic landmarks due in part to the governmental organization that has the landmarks commission lodged as part of the county government? Possibly. But notice that the Historic District Commission (not the same as the landmarks commission but with some similarities), is part of the city’s planning department.

Threats to historic buildings – from the government

The owner of the landmark P&N Railway Depot (above) wants to demolish it rather than meet city’s code demands.

You may have read the op-ed I did in November (“City may seek landmark demolition”), pointing to an unintended consequence of the city’s new non-residential building code – several demolition orders going out to designated historic landmarks that weren’t in good repair.

Or maybe you caught the WFAE report last week on the Davis General Merchandise store, a century old historic landmark which has been ordered to make repairs, and whose aging outbuildings were ordered demolished if repairs weren’t made.

Yes, this is yet another example of your city government and city elected officials being oblivious to the value of old buildings and historic buildings – and not just landmarks – when they adopt city policy. They’re not necessarily hostile, just oblivious to the issue. Witness the happy ease with which planners and council members adopted zoning standards for transit-station areas that allow buildings so tall they’ll alter the property value landscape, making smaller older buildings in places such as NoDa worth so little compared to the land they’re on that owners won’t even blink before razing them for towers.

As today’s Observer editorial (“Historic landmarks? City turns blind eye”) points out, City Council members say they didn’t even discuss, when talking about the proposed ordinance last spring, what its effect might be on historic buildings. That’s telling.

Walter Abernethy, the city’s code enforcement director, says the issue did come up during stakeholder meetings before the ordinance was proposed. But the ordinance has little in it to protect landmark buildings.

Ted Alexander, with Preservation North Carolina, points out that PNC has covenants on the Davis store to protect it – though whether that could prevent demolition is, for now, an open question. (I’ve asked Ted but haven’t heard back yet.) And it’s important to remember that the city hasn’t ordered demolition of the store and isn’t pushing for it. It just wants repairs, which owner Silas Davis would have to pay for. Davis, when I talked to him Friday, was irate about the whole situation and said he didn’t have the money for the repairs.

But as the editorial points out, it’s the historic old Thrift depot that faces the more immediate threat. Its owner, CSX railway, would prefer not to spend what it would require to bring the building up to code. It’s asking for a demolition permit. Because it’s a landmark, the county historic landmarks commission can delay the demo for up to a year, but can’t prevent demolition.

A few N.C. municipalities have gotten special legislation to let them absolutely forbid demolition in some selected cases. New Bern, for instance, can forbid demolition in its historic districts, although there are some procedural hoops everyone has to jump through.

Is the city’s oblivion toward historic landmarks due in part to the governmental organization that has the landmarks commission lodged as part of the county government? Possibly. But notice that the Historic District Commission (not the same as the landmarks commission but with some similarities), is part of the city’s planning department.

What’s the opposite of ‘green’? Maybe this?

(Update Sept. 21: See “Demolition, part two” for an update on the owner’s plans to build a new house on the site.)

Some days I think I should have a contest for the Anti-green. This would probably win for the month. Maybe the year.

The attractive, two-story, 3,161-square-foot home, built in 1941 was assessed for tax purposes at $331,900 (the total parcel, including the land, is assessed at $778,800). I walked past it a few weeks ago and spotted the bulldozer.

When I walked past it today, here’s what it looked like:

I don’t know the owners’ plans. The demo permit says: “Total res demo – No Build Back.”

Demolition is extraordinarily wasteful, and not just of materials. As Time magazine has written: “It would take an average of 65 years for the reduced carbon emissions from a new energy efficient home to make up for the resources lost by demolishing the old one.” And that’s IF you build a new, green home.

This waste is unconscionable. Yet there’s nothing to stop it other than owners’ consciences. And many people don’t know about, or don’t care about, wasting resources.

This lot is next door to another vacant lot, where another large and attractive home was demolished by a builder several years ago, right before the housing market imploded.

In my opinion the city should stop allowing demolitions until there is a building permit in hand for whatever is going to replace it. Now THAT would be green. We’d have saved plenty of useful (and affordable) houses and buildings over the years if that policy had been in place.

What’s the opposite of ‘green’? Maybe this?

(Update Sept. 21: See “Demolition, part two” for an update on the owner’s plans to build a new house on the site.)

Some days I think I should have a contest for the Anti-green. This would probably win for the month. Maybe the year.

The attractive, two-story, 3,161-square-foot home, built in 1941 was assessed for tax purposes at $331,900 (the total parcel, including the land, is assessed at $778,800). I walked past it a few weeks ago and spotted the bulldozer.

When I walked past it today, here’s what it looked like:

I don’t know the owners’ plans. The demo permit says: “Total res demo – No Build Back.”

Demolition is extraordinarily wasteful, and not just of materials. As Time magazine has written: “It would take an average of 65 years for the reduced carbon emissions from a new energy efficient home to make up for the resources lost by demolishing the old one.” And that’s IF you build a new, green home.

This waste is unconscionable. Yet there’s nothing to stop it other than owners’ consciences. And many people don’t know about, or don’t care about, wasting resources.

This lot is next door to another vacant lot, where another large and attractive home was demolished by a builder several years ago, right before the housing market imploded.

In my opinion the city should stop allowing demolitions until there is a building permit in hand for whatever is going to replace it. Now THAT would be green. We’d have saved plenty of useful (and affordable) houses and buildings over the years if that policy had been in place.