You watch. We, the taxpayers, are going to wind up shelling out to fix the mess left behind by elected officials who let developers rape East Charlotte.
This morning a panel from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute presented its recommendations for what to do about Eastland Mall. Read tomorrow’s Observer for details. Here’s the story from Friday’s Charlotte Observer. The report is also on the city’s web site.
The ULI panel is recommending a far-reaching redevelopment of almost the whole Eastland site. New name, new streets, scraping the site clean and starting afresh. It will be expensive and will likely require public investment in better infrastructure, and possibly other incentives. Without it, they said, East Charlotte will be in trouble.
If property values there tank, and crime rises, the whole city will be in trouble because East Charlotte is a huge chunk of territory.
Mayor Pat McCrory, who spoke at the presentation, was pointed but precise in his “corridors of crap” analysis. “We built pure crap in a lot of these corridors,” he said. He referred to the design of commercial buildings throughout East Charlotte, built in the 1960s and ’70s under what he rightly termed “lousy zoning,” and slack local ordinances that didn’t require sidewalks, trees, parks or much of anything.
Here’s the underlying problem. For decades your elected officials – both city and county – just rolled over for developers. They took their money, in campaign donations, and let the developers have their way. Didn’t even need pimps.
The ULI panel found one reason Eastland Mall has been in such distress the past 10 years is a “dramatic oversupply of retailing in the area.” The number of retail square feet built (30 square feet per capita) is 50 percent more than the national average of 20 square feet per capita.
The panel found “obsolete, deteriorated” strip shopping centers. It found the public realm – that means streets, sidewalks, parks and public open space – “does not match consumer expectations.” It found that multiple big box stores allowed to be built in the area have taken away Eastland’s customer base.
The market in the area isn’t bad, they said. There’s just way, way too much retail space to serve it. And who approved all that excessive retail space? Your City Council. (In earlier years, the county commissioners approved stuff outside city limits, so they probably share blame.)
Whose zoning rules were so slack they allowed ugly strip shopping centers? Your City Council. Whose ordinances were so slack they didn’t require sidewalks or trees or open space? Your City Council and your county commissioners.
They were sweet-talked by developers and didn’t believe in putting onerous restrictions on the private sector – anywhere, not just in East Charlotte. Let the market sort it out, they said as they cavalierly over-zoned retail space in the University City area in 1993.
In 1999 the City Council approved a rezoning for Lowe’s and Target big box stores on Albemarle Road that the planners, the planning commission and neighborhood residents begged them to deny it, saying it would cause ugly sprawl and undermine Eastland Mall’s viability. Thanks to Patrick Cannon, Malachi Greene, Mike Jackson, Nasif Majeed, Don Reid and Lynn Wheeler, who voted for the rezoning, those predictions came true.
Now, 30 years after Eastland Mall opened, it’s clear somebody (mall developer Henry Faison tops the list, but it’s a long list) made a ton of money on the mall and the attending “crap” on Albemarle Road.
And if anyone ever has to clean up the mess elected officials allowed them to leave behind, it’s probably going to be all of the rest of us.