After my Saturday column about the probable demise of the Coffee Cup restaurant (“It’s just an old building sitting on pricey dirt”), I got this semi-rant from reader Ed Stone. I’m posting it with his permission.
What do you think? Is Stone on target? Is Charlotte’s destiny to become a characterless Atlanta wannabe?
(I have to disagree with his smear of vanilla, in the fourth paragraph, as though it is soulless and lacking in character. But that’s a topic for another day.)
It is the mission of our City Council and the Charlotte Center City Partners to turn Charlotte into Atlanta. As rapidly as possible, with minimal, insincere lip service to what is viewed as the commerce-blocking detritus of the past. Once you accept that perspective, you will have far fewer surprises and be better prepared to navigate the changes.
Just as council put a few million bucks into restoring a trolley so as to pretend some little link to history, just hang on and you’ll see them spend a few million to get some of today’s buses running routes and reconstructing a micro-dairy farm near Selwyn. With dollars, we can build some simulated-genuine-fake-old new stuff to look substantial.
Charlotte’s motto, in action, is “to seem, rather than to be.” We’ve torn down what we were, now we are bulldozing what we are. The goal is to be just another installation of a “chain” city, as cookie-cut as the next McDonald’s burger joint.
Cities are following the model of airports, and we’ll not see much difference among them, as our airports and cities are being rebuilt to function as standardized, vanilla, soulless, high-density conduits for passers-through and cash.
The Coffee Cup’s land tax value issue is just an egregious example of what every Mecklenburg homeowner is facing. Time to cash in, and let Chi Chi’s, Sak’s, Wal-Mart, Johnson and Wales, light rail, Bobcats, Panthers, baseball, a “stroll district.” NASCAR, NoDa, “South End” and the “no cul-de sac” ordinance, et al, have it. Tear-downs and high-density condos. Maximize the tax value per square foot. Oppose the “growth agenda” of council and you’re a pro-unemployment Luddite.
Quite a shame, as we are throwing away the single claim to competitive advantage and distinctiveness we could have as a city, in favor of being an Atlanta Jr. lookalike-wanna-be.
The world is not clamoring for another Atlanta, as far as I know.