Helicopter guy rebuffed on rezoning

Quick update on the council action, regarding the proposed solar-energy building on Park Road, whose developer would be the fellow in the much-loved “rogue helicopter” video.

The council members set a new land speed record in turning it down 12-0. Because there was a protest petition in force by adjoining property owners, even the mayor got to help vote it down.

See the post below, or click here, for more information and the video.

But will solar palace have a helicopter pad?

Will the helicopter guy appear again before City Council? Tonight, the council is supposed to decide on a rezoning that’s been getting a lot of, well, snickering in private. What people are saying, all off the record of course, is: “Watch the helicopters video.” If you do a YouTube search on the petitioner’s name, David Thompson, and “helicopters” you’ll get a video of a City Council public hearing from Jan. 28, 2002.

I hear it’s one of the “greatest hits” around City Hall.

(4:48 PM addendum: It’s come to my attention that longtime devotees of this video might like to read the actual minutes from the council meeting where the helicopter guy appeared. Here’s a link. Check Page 11. I also hear some Charlotte folks have memorized the guy’s speech and recite it at parties.)

Here’s a link to a story when the project was first proposed last summer. And here’s a link to an artist’s rendering of the finished project. The idea is for a 12-unit multifamily building that would maximize solar energy principles. The proposal “is consistent with adopted land use plans and policies,” the planning staff analysis says. But they’re recommending against an OK, because of “the 60-foot height and the architecture associated with the project.”

It does bring up an interesting issue: If a project is consistent with the plans, should the council vote it down because it’s ugly or because of any questions about the developer? I asked assistant city attorney Bob Hagemann, who said rezoning decisions are considered “legislative” and in such a decision they can “exercise their legislative judgment and discretion.”
(One more thing, in this update. Some commenters think this posting is about solar energy or area plans. Um, folks, just watch the video. MN)

Here is the YouTube video. Note: The title isn’t mine. It’s from the video on YouTube.com:

Sprawl’s dipping into your pocketbook

People just don’t realize how much extra tax money must be spent because of the sprawling development patterns, not just in Charlotte and North Carolina, but around the country. Consider connected streets, and their role in easing expenditures for roads and for emergency services.
It’s clear that connecting streets – whether with a rigid grid or more curving street patterns such as Charlotte’s John Nolen-designed Myers Park neighborhood – relieves thoroughfares of some portion of their traffic. Yes, each neighborhood street gets a bit more traffic. But if they’re well-designed, narrow enough to discourage speeding, have adequate sidewalks, bike lanes and/or on-street parking (or all of the above) traffic moves slowly and poses little burden for residents.
Meanwhile, thoroughfares need not carry as much traffic (or be widened or resurfaced as often). When there’s an accident or other problem on a thoroughfare, motorists have plenty of options for alternate routes.
Yes, it costs developers a bit more to build a street grid than a cul-de-sac subdivision, and the extra streets reduce the number of lots and buildings a developer can squeeze onto the land. But for taxpayers, it ought to be a no-brainer.
But connecting streets can have some other, unexpected benefits for municipal coffers. Here’s an intriguing study from Charlotte’s transportation and fire department staff that finds fire station costs sharply lower in parts of town where streets connect.
The study analyzed eight stations and found those in connected neighborhoods can serve more square miles because they can reach more homes within acceptable response times. The Dilworth station can serve 14 square miles. The station in the cul-de-sac-laden Highland Creek area can cover only 8 square miles.
The study found the annualized per-household life cycle cost of the Dilworth station to be $159. The equivalent cost for the station in the Highland Creek area was $740 – almost five times more.
Charlotte Department of Transportation staff who worked on the study included Matt Magnasco, Steven Castongia and Katie Templeton. Fire Department staff included Benny Warwick and Rachel Pillar. Magnasco tells me it hasn’t yet been published or peer-reviewed, but they’re working to get it into shape for that. The PowerPoint presentation linked to above was for a Congress for the New Urbanism transportation conference in Charlotte last last year.

Obama’s urban affairs guy

President Obama has finally chosen his long-promised director of urban affairs, a guy from the Bronx named Adolfo Carrión. Carrión is Bronx Borough president, has a master’s in urban planning from Hunter College and was a minister and public school teacher before going to grad school. Born in Manhattan of Puerto Rican descent, he’s president of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. (Wonder if he knows Dan Ramirez, the ex-Mecklenburg County commissioner?)

This Washington Post story has Carrión saying what his focus will be: He wants cities to become economic centers that can pull the country out of a recession and improve American competitiveness in a global market, according to the Post.
Here’s a quote, from a 2007 speech, reported in the New York Times Dec. 3, 2008:
• “We can’t keep throwing money at a housing policy that concentrates poor families in massive housing projects and hopes for the best. We can’t keep wishing kids into success by simply declaring that no child will be left behind. We must stop treating the poor as laboratory subjects that we tinker with in our pricey think tanks and universities.”

Another New Yorker, Derek Douglas, was named special assistant to the president for urban affairs. Douglas was N.Y. Gov. David Paterson’s counsel in Washington and director of his Washington office, overseeing federal policy development and advocacy on domestic, economic and urban policy issues for New York.
Good for Obama for recognizing that cities are — shock! — important to the health of the nation and that cities probably need some champions in high places. But why does it look as though Obama thinks New York is the only city that can provide that expertise? What about Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, et al?

Got vacancies? Try artists

It’s a continuing problem in Charlotte: Neighborhood gentrification (e.g. NoDa), combined with relentless and wasteful demolition of old buildings shrinks the spaces for artists, even while the city’s arts community is trying to grow. And while the role of the arts in redeveloping ailing neighborhoods gets much lip service, the city and its major NGOs (non-governmental organizations, for the non-wonks reading) haven’t succeeded in doing much to help provide housing.

Here’s a piece about a program run through the Boston Redevelopment Authority, that uses the affordable-housing requirement for large projects (and note that it’s a REQUIREMENT) as well other city-offered incentives. (Interesting factoid: The BRA director is John Palmieri, who from 2002 to 2004 was the City of Charlotte’s director of economic development.)

Note this line in the linked-to piece above: “Boston already requires that at least 15 percent of units in large new residential buildings be priced based on income limits.”

Hmmm. The recently released “Housing Charlotte 2007 Implementation Committee” had a subcommittee to look at that kind of idea, called “inclusionary zoning,” but the name of the subcommittee was “Incentive-Based Inclusionary Housing Policies.” A mole on the committee tells me anytime anyone mentioned anything about “mandatory” they were reprimanded and told the recommendation would be for only “incentive-based” techniques (i.e. voluntary).

Kiosk sales at malls — too aggressive?

In the category of not-earth-shaking but sorta interesting is this, which I learned while looking up other things:

You know those Dead Sea Salt kiosks at SouthPark (and probably other malls around here) where the young women practically tackle you to get you to try their lotion or whatever it is?
It seems they’re controversial in the shopping mall biz, because A) they really tick off a lot of customers, but B) make lots of sales which makes landlords happy.
The Natick Collection outside Boston is one of several upscale shopping malls that have cracked down. Wish they’d do so here, as well.

CEOs competent? Read this.

I have to leap in, responding to the comment thread about empty cities.

To the commenter who speculated that CEOs’ jobs should be the ones automated, you’ve got to love this Time magazine piece looking at scientific experiments that find that — guess what? — the people who are likely to be rated as competent sometimes aren’t at all. What they are is talkers. A tidbit:

“Dominant individuals behaved in ways that made them appear competent,” the researchers write, “above and beyond their actual competence.” Troublingly, group members seemed only too willing to follow these underqualified bosses. An overwhelming 94% of the time, the teams used the first answer anyone shouted out — often giving only perfunctory consideration to others that were offered.

And yes, Ken Lewis is eligible for the $500,000 salary cap, say our banking experts. Most of the cap applies to companies that take bailout money going forward, but B of A is in a special category, they say.

Worried about nature-deprived kids?

Plenty of folks worry that today’s children don’t get to spend much time outdoors, and that such an existence harms their health, including physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually.

A group called N.C. CAN! (North Carolina Children and Nature) is holding its second annual gathering tomorrow, Feb. 18, at the N.C. Zoo.

The group is one of many inspired by Richard Louv’s writings, “Leave No Child Inside,” and his book “Last Child in the Woods,” about what he dubs “nature-deficit disorder.”

For more information about the gathering or N.C. CAN!, contact Kathy Bull at kbull@nczoo.com or 336-879-7286.

The emptiest N.C. city?

North Carolina’s emptiest city, according to Forbes magazine, is:

A. Charlotte
B. Durham
C. Lenoir
D. Greensboro

Answer:
D. This article in Forbes says it’s Greensboro, which landed at No. 4 on its list of America’s Emptiest Cities.
The ranking is based on fourth-quarter info from the Census Bureau, looking at rental and homeowner vacancies in the nation’s 75 largest metropolitan statistical areas. The Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord MSA ranks No. 15, tied with Cincinnati.
Not surprisingly, Detroit ranks No. 2. But No. 1 this year is Las Vegas, the recently booming Western gambling mecca.
And Asheboro, home of the N.C. Zoo (see zoo lions depicted at right), hit Forbes’ list of the Fastest-Dying Towns, landing at No. 4, behind Kokomo, Ind. That measure looked at income growth, the rate of domestic in-migration, the change in poverty and the percentage of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher for places 20,000 to 65,000 population. And there’s no stimulus money available for zoos. They’re among the things (swimming pools and aquariums are others) specifically ineligible for stimulus money. Geez.

But there’s hope for other N.C. cities. Look for Ken Lewis, now that his pay is limited to $500K, to be house hunting in the Capital City, City of Oaks, our very own Raleigh, which hit No. 2 on Forbes’ list of Best Cities to Live on $500,000.

About that Home Depot Design Center

That Home Depot Design Center that’s closing at the Metropolitan development near uptown? The graphic above probably explains all. It gives some international context on retail in America. (Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler, via Andres Duany, via Brenda who works at the Duany Plater-Zyberk office in Charlotte). If you can’t read the fine print, the information is from “Shopping Centers Today.”
And why do I fear there would be a similarly configured chart of “credit card debt per capita” or even “high-fructose corn syrup consumption per person”?
OK, back to work. Be sure to read tomorrow’s Viewpoint Page in the Observer. I can’t reveal yet what will be on it but it will have excellently written headlines. And a sublime Buzz. I hope.