Category: uptown

When it comes to I-277 cap, bold Charlotte gets timid

I-77 is one side of the noose encircling uptown Charlotte.(Photo by Nancy Pierce)

If you think it’s too bold, too “out there” – too gutsy – to seriously plan to put a roof atop part of the freeway encircling uptown Charlotte, consider what’s up in St. Louis. As Eric Jaffe in The Atlantic Cities website describes in “Should We Be Thrilled Or Disappointed by St. Louis’ New Highway Park?” other cities think freeway capping is too timid. (Charlotteans might note the appearance of former Mayor Anthony Foxx, as transportation secretary, at the groundbreaking in St. Louis.)

The article notes that the “Park over the Highway” (aka “the lid”) is part of a $380 million project to connect the rest of downtown St. Louis to the Mississippi River, funded by a mixture of public money (federal grants and a voter-approved local sales tax) and private contributions (via the CityArchRiver foundation).

But in St. Louis, it seems, the local debate is not whether it’s a waste of money to build a park downtown on top of a freeway, but on whether the freeway itself should just, well, go away, and turn into a boulevard.

“On the contrary, some local observers see the ‘the lid’ as a bandage for the urban interstate, when what’s really needed is reconstructive surgery. Rather than toss a green carpet over I-70, they would prefer to knock down the highway completely and construct grade-level boulevards in its place — truly integrating city and riverfront.” Indeed, as Jaffe reports, “Writing at Next City in April, city alderman Scott Ogilvie pointed out that nearly every public comment about the current ‘Park over the Highway’ project supported further study of the I-70 demolition.”

What are we to make of this in the Queen City? We have a highway (Interstate 277, with a leg of I-77) that encircles our uptown, cutting it off from all the surrounding neighborhoods. This highway was planned in the 1950s! That was when Le Corbusier was envisioning cities of nothing but towers, lawns and highways (and apparently he never envisioned parking lots, but that’s a topic for another day), and when Robert Moses was gutting New York neighborhoods for highways, until opposition finally stopped him. But here in the QC our highway didn’t even get finished until the 1980s, by which time other cities were seriously questioning this technique of strangling their downtowns. And, yes, it gutted plenty of Charlotte neighborhoods as well, but they were mostly poor, so city fathers paid little heed to any protests they might have raised.

It was the mid- to late 1990s when I first heard the idea to cap a part of I-277, the part that’s below grade from about Church Street to Caldwell or Davidson streets,  So … why is St. Louis so far ahead of Charlotte on this endeavor?  OK, maybe it’s that giant, extraordinary river just beyond their freeway. Nevertheless, it’s past time for Charlotte to get its act in gear on this. We may not have the Mighty Mississippi and the Gateway Arch, but we have a wonderfully reviving uptown, surrounded by some great neighborhoods. We have Little Sugar Creek, and its greenway is pretty much blocked by the I-277-U.S. 74 spaghetti-bowl junction.  Is a cap better than boulevard-ization? I don’t know, but I do know either would be better than what we have now. Since when has Charlotte become so timid?

CCCP backs down from $1M market ask

Charlotte Center City Partners is backing off its request for up to $1 million in city funds to help upfit a former uptown store as a city market. Michael Smith, president of the uptown boosters’ group, told me this afternoon they have “postponed” their return to the city’s economic development committee to ask for the money.

Instead, he says, “We just want to be further down the road,” with plans for upfitting the former Reid’s Fine Foods store on Seventh Street at the Lynx light rail line (in photo, below right). The group will hear potential vendors at the market in a 4:30-6 p.m. session today, and then from the general public at a 6-7:30 p.m. public meeting and workshop tonight.

Afterward, Smith said, they’ll use the information they hear to work with design firm Shook Kelly on what changes are needed to the building. (An interesting side note: When Seventh Street Station was originally being built the space that eventually became Reid’s Fine Foods grocery was first designed to hold a city market.)

After coming up with the design plans – and here’s the change of plans – “an organizing committee will be established to raise funds to build out the interior and exterior of the market by applying for grants from private entities, foundations and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that will match the private and in-kind dollars already raised,” says a CCCP news release.

Whatever the gap is, between what’s raised and what the upfit costs, will be what CCCP will ask the city for, Smith says.
That’s a much smarter approach. I think a city market is a fine idea. But it was politically clumsy (some might say delusional, though I maybe wouldn’t go that far) for CCCP to think City Council members, who got scorched earlier this year when they found $12 million to help launch a city streetcar project, would happily sprinkle $1 million big ones over a market.

As the Observer’s editorial board said in a Sept. 15 editorial: “Could the market upfit happen for less than $1 million? Are other funding partners available? The city must explore those options before it plunks down a big chunk of the public’s money. We’d hate to see the idea scrapped. That would be a lost opportunity. But $1 million from city taxpayers? That’s going to take a lot of swallowing.”
The new approach makes much more sense. The group’s market consultant, David O’Neil, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture and big foundations are looking seriously at food issues and “food hubs.” Further, he says, “You can spend a lot of money on these things [market buildings] and waste a lot of money.”

Figure out how much you really need to do on the building – for which CCCP has procured a lease from owner Bank of America – then try to get private money and only then, if you need to, tap the public coffers. That said, it’s absolutely appropriate if it’s necessary for the city to kick in some money for a market. Ditto the county. Cities all over America have publicly built and- or publicly owned markets. Even little Asheboro, N.C., has a city-owned downtown market building, some Asheboro-based friends tell me. So does Hendersonville, among many other places. There’s nothing odd or sinister about the idea, and a market is a great chance to help small entrepreneurs build small businesses.

But politically, right now, with schools being closed, yet more teacher layoffs looming, libraries and rec centers severely cut back, to cough up $1 million for an uptown market would go over about as well as the Ebola virus. Smart move, CCCP, to retrench and restrategize.
Photo credits: Tommie Hagood inspected produce in July at the Historic West End Market on Beatties Ford Road. DIEDRA LAIRD/CHARLOTTE OBSERVER
Reid’s building: DAVIE HINSHAW/CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

NY writer likes us! He really likes us!

Krista Terrell of the Arts & Science Council just sent along a note revealing that the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler, Seth Kugel, spent a few days in Charlotte and blogs about it, “Making Pit Stops in Charlotte.”

While he wrote a lot about the NASCAR Hall of Fame and that he enjoyed his visit there despite not being a NASCAR fan, he also praises the ASC’s new public art tour and podcast, which is why Terrell was interested in sharing.

Here’s Kugel’s remark about NASCAR: “I know that Nascar is awesome in the same way I know that cricket and Tolstoy novels and contemporary dance are awesome. I personally can’t see the appeal, but enough reasonable people disagree with me that I believe in their awesomeness.”

He’s not exactly kind to the city’s image elsewhere, though (the bold-facing here is mine): “The city — which has experienced rapid growth (with a population of over 700,000, double what it was in the mid-1980s) and at the same time maintained a relative lack of identity (banking center and airline hub, total snoozer) — intrigued me. Something had to be going on there, and I would find out what it was.”

Here’s Kugel’s take on the public art tour:
“Uptown is one of those clean areas that people from grittier cities may at first perceive as sanitized and devoid of character, but the podcast will go a long way to dispel that, pointing out many works of public art, including the four statues that stand at the four corners of Trade and Tryon Streets. (Don’t miss the very odd bust of Alan Greenspan in the statue representing “Commerce”.)”

I wrote about the public art tour in a September op-ed, “The art of a city: more than mosaics.”

City leaps to fix hazard

This updates my report Monday on the ugly post in the uptown sidewalk, mentioned in yesterday’s blog posting about some pedestrian hazards I encountered uptown.

I just got e-mail from Tamara Blue, customer service manager of Charlotte Department of Transportation: “I wanted to let you know the post is being cut down as I type this. We very much appreciate you letting us know about this trip hazard. Unfortunately, we can’t be everywhere at all times and knowing citizens like you will let us know when there is a problem is a tremendous help.”

Kudos to the city for solving a small but dangerous pedestrian hazard. Now if only they can figure out how to inspire folks to shovel their sidewalks after it snows, and to rake off the leaf piles …

This Monday: Caldwell goes two-way


More back to the future: Several uptown streets are being converted from one-way to two-way.

This is, by and large, a good thing. One-way streets encourage driving fast, which is fine for highways but inside cities is A) More dangerous for pedestrians, B) More dangerous for drivers and C) Makes city streets feel like roads instead of city streets.

Below is a snippet from last week’s memo to City Council, saying that Caldwell Street, from Fourth Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (formerly Second Street) switches to two-way traffic by noon Monday.

Brevard Street is due for similar treatment, from Stonewall to Trade streets. Update: the section of Brevard from Stonewall to MLK Boulevard will convert in May 2010, and the segment from MLK to Trade will switch in 2011 – some right-of-way issues will delay that segment, says CDOT Chief Danny Pleasant.

Here’s the memo:

Beginning Monday, August 17, traffic patterns will change on South Caldwell Street between Fourth Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Starting at 9:00 a.m., crews will begin changing Caldwell Street from a one-way street to a two-way street. The conversion is expected to be complete by noon.
This conversion to two-way traffic is part of the Center City Transportation Plan adopted by the City Council in 2006, and has been implemented as part of the interchange and street modifications associated with the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Later phases will also convert Brevard Street between Stonewall and Trade to two-way traffic. The changes will improve traffic circulation in the area and improve accessibility and safety for pedestrians.

‘Spoofer’ hits homer with flea market pitch

“The Spoofer” maybe meant it tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a great idea:

One of the comments on the “Recreating Rome” posting, (scroll down to after 11 PM July 6) about how to enliven the Fourth Street-Graham Street-West Trade Street vicinity uptown, came from someone calling herself/himself “The Spoofer,” who said:

“The solution is rather simple: Get city council to declare that area a 24/7 flea market and yard sale mecca. Citizens should be told that the space around those streets would be available for free on a first-come, first-served basis. Residents would be allowed to bring their own card tables any time they wish, and sell all that junk that Charlotteans spend most Saturdays driving from neighborhood to neighborhood to buy. Voila! Instant retail in center city without spending millions of taxpayer monies to alter infrastructure or to subsidize businesses.
It could turn into another Anderson Jockey Lot, only bigger. And talk about activity! There’s nothing more active than a gigantic city yard sale district. Tourists would flock there for bargains.

“Those pocketing cash at the end of the day from their efforts would no doubt spend part of it on uptown attractions or dining, further boosting center cityism. The only drawback would be the futility of trying to impose a system of sales or use tax on the vendors so that government could grow bigger from the proceeds. Gee, maybe that’s not a drawback after all.”

I think it’s a fabulous idea. Michael Smith (CEO of Charlotte Center City Partners) , I hope you’re reading. It’s akin to architect Murray Whisnant’s idea a few years back (in the pre-EpiCentre era) to take the old civic center building, knock out its side walls and turn it into “the agora” – a farmers and flea market for anyone who wanted to sell there.

Seriously, small-scale retail begets larger-scale retail. And I’d love it if I didn’t have to drive all the way up to the Metrolina Expo for a good flea-market experience.

Kudos to The Spoofer. (But your idea to flood uptown – see comment at 8:36 PM – for a lake is somewhat less workable, dontcha think?)

Chamber: Don’t blame us for Overstreet

Charlotte Chamber president Bob Morgan, on the eve of the Chamber’s annual intercity trip (this year to – ta da! – Charlotte) called to report that an oft-repeated story that uptown’s overstreet walkways emerged from a Chamber inter-visit to Minneapolis is, well, wrong.

Morgan said he, too, had repeated that story. But (because of a question from yours truly seeking other examples of Chamber-trip-inspired developments) he hauled out the entire list of Chamber intercity visits dating to 1956. The only Minneapolis trip was in 1993, two decades after the first overstreet walkway went up.

Photo: Skywalk under construction in 2001 photo

Why “blame” in that headline I wrote? (It’s my word, not the Chamber’s.) I’m among many who criticize the walkways for hurting the possiblities for uptown retail. They make it hard to find the stores, unless you know they’re in there. And they make the street-level experience blander, because you can’t window-shop because the stores are hidden. I’ll be fair, now, and note that in cold, rainy weather they’re very popular. Yes, I use them too, upon occasion, typically the “ice storm” occasion.

I dug into our electronic archives which date to 1985 and found a painful number of references – some written by me, others by esteemed Observer reporters such as Doug Smith, Jeff Elder and M.S. Van Hecke – to this mythological, walkway-inspiring Chamber trip to Minneapolis.

Morgan speculated that the walkways were inspired by Minneapolis, but not on an official Chamber inter-city visit.

He may well be right. Here’s the earliest mention of them I found. (No, I didn’t take time to visit our newsprint clips, fun though such visits can be.) This was written in a 1986 news article by Ted Mellnik who, then as well as now, is noted in our newsroom for his reportorial precision: “The Overstreet Mall was proposed in a 1971 center-city development plan by Vincent Ponte, who said it would create ‘a city within a city.’ Development was spurred in the mid-1970s when a group of Charlotte business and civic leaders visited Minneapolis, which has a walkway system.”

Update: 6:45 p.m.: Got an e-mail from Carl Johnson who offers this info: “Mary, my recollection is the Gibson L. Smith, real estate man and civic leader (on council, I think, and ran for mayor but lost) deserves a lot of credit as a promoter (I say that in the neutral sense) for the overstreet walkways. Carl Johnson”

(I’ll be going on as much of this week’s Chamber “visit” as I can manage away from the job. So blog postings may be sparse. I’ll try to Tweet @marynewsom or @nakedcityblog. The Chamber is asking all Twitter-users to use this hashtag: #icv09.)

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.

Do ‘uptown leaders’ still rule the roost?

Vacation over. No more outerbelt opinions — at least for a while. Onward to other things.

Is the Saturday Observer so slightly read that a huge package on the future of Charlotte — one suggesting that the city’s “business leaders” weren’t the leaders anymore — got only two comments? Maybe everyone was busy dying Easter eggs or playing in the sunshine. Even a column from UNC Charlotte’s Jeff Michael attracted little reader attention online. He writes that based on planning textbook factors, Charlotte shouldn’t have been an urban success at all.

So take a look. Do you agree that the local oligarchy of business leaders is gone? If so, who should take their place, and how should that process happen?

I wrote, “I keep hearing people asking who Charlotte’s next leaders will be – as though some king-maker somewhere gets out the royal staff and taps a few CEOs, who become The New Leaders. I think Charlotte is too big and too diverse for that old pattern of oligarchy to work, even if we wanted it to.”

Put your comments here, or on the article, if you care to comment. Reactions (those that are civil and have some thought informing them) will help shape comments at a series of forums around the region next week, with 2008 Citistates Report writers Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson and local elected officials, business leaders, environmentalists and others.

The forums are free and open to all. To Register: www.ui.uncc.edu.
They’ll be:
Tuesday, April 21, Gaston County: 2-4:30 p.m. at Gaston Citizen’s Resource Center, U.S. 321 North, Dallas.
Wednesday, April 22, York County: 1-3:30 p.m. at Rock Hill City Hall, 155 Johnston St., Rock Hill.
Thursday, April 23, Cabarrus County: 1-3:30 p.m., Cabarrus Arena and Events Center, 4751 N.C. 49 North, Concord.

I’m moderating the panels on Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope I’ll see some of you there.

CDOT: “Don’t Walk Here” Wall Doomed


Here’s the word from Danny Pleasant, interim director of the Charlotte Department of Transportation, responding to my post earlier today about this pedestrian obstruction on Brevard Street as you head from Fourth toward Third Street:

Good news, Mary. We have a project to convert Brevard Street between Trade Street and Stonewall Street into a more pedestrian oriented, two-way, two-lane street. It will follow the current work of converting Caldwell Street to two-way operation. We are in the process of selecting a design firm. The process should finish up in October. The project will include sidewalks on both sides of Brevard the length of the project. It will take a couple of years to build. But when it’s done, the brick wall will be gone.

Here’s what I had written earlier:

Don’t you love this? Walkable Charlotte, eh?

This particular barrier to pedestrians is on Brevard Street, between Fourth and Third streets, a half a block from the Transportation Center — a spot to which thousands of people walk daily.

Last time I asked about it, several years ago, someone at either CDOT or the city planning office told me they were waiting for that property to develop and when it did, they’d make sure the sidewalk got built. That’s been several years. Guess they’re still waiting. I’ll see what interim CDOT chief Danny Pleasant has to say.

And to be fair, I’ll say that CDOT has improved dramatically in its attention to pedestrian comforts, and that uptown Charlotte is, square foot for square foot, the largest pedestrian friendly site in the city. Does anyone know of any others that would compete for that distinction?