The Naked City Blog

If you’re a council watcher, or just someone who likes seeing the way the developers’ lobby jerks around elected officials, be sure to be watching the Monday night City Council meeting.

The council is scheduled to vote on a Transportation Action Plan, a document that’s been in the works 2 1/2 years. There have been four public hearings.

But April 24, when the council was supposed to vote, up popped the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, known by its froggy-sounding acronym REBIC. They had some concerns, they said. (Some history – REBIC has “concerns” about any city or county proposal that would cause developers to do things differently, such as build sidewalks or stop building in floodplains or save trees or even just build planting strips large enough for new street trees to grow in.)

Immediately Mayor Pat McCrory and council member John Lassiter – each of whom, like many local elected officials, gets substantial campaign donations from REBIC’s political action committee as well as from individual developers – moved to postpone the vote. And so the council postponed the vote. Because one special interest group wanted them to.

All special interests are equal, you see, but some are more equal than others. Michael Barnes, a newly elected council member from District 4 who’s lived in Charlotte only since 1998, was amazed. “I knew what the organization was, but I didn’t realize their political weight,” he told me Friday. “I had not dealt with them – meaning they hadn’t given me any money.”

He made his dismay clear at the meeting. The Observer’s Richard Rubin quoted him saying, “Other than wanting (to make) yourself seem politically popular with special-interest groups, there’s no good reason to delay this.”

REBIC had had plenty of time to make any objections known well in advance. So did you, assuming you’re a resident of Charlotte or own a business here.

But when you object to something, or want to propose something, you’re lucky if you can get a council member to take your phone call. REBIC doesn’t have that problem. The city department of transportation even holds a regular luncheon for REBIC and other developers, where REBIC leaders get not only a free lunch paid for by you, the taxpayers, but they are assured of the ear of the top CDOT leaders. I wrote about it two years ago.

Barnes is going to be fun to watch, as he learns even more about how things work around here. I hope he’ll continue to pipe up when he thinks special interests are being treated as if they’re a bit too special.

Does East Charlotte have a future? That’s what reader and East Charlotte resident Diane Ruggiero asked me this week:

Hi Mary. I often read your column in the Observer and I was wondering what you think of what’s happening in East Charlotte.

I am a resident of Sheffield, a lovely little community surrounded by Independence, Albemarle, Sharon Amity, Central, and Eastway. The neighborhood is filled with lovely houses, mostly built in the 1950s (ours was built in 1954 and sits on a half acre of land).

We have lived in our current house for over eight years (and in an east side apartment before that) and we have seen the decline of the surrounding businesses. Fortunately, our neighborhood has held on.With the upcoming closing of a Harris Teeter [at Eastland mall], this leaves another empty big box on the east side. The old Upton’s building on Albemarle has been empty for close to 10 years. Hannafords is empty. Eastland Mall is on the decline and holding on as best it can. (Dillard’s is now only on one level and is an outlet store).

It is nice to see the multi-cultural aspect of Central Avenue, but with immigration such a hot topic, it makes me wonder about what will happen if people leave. I am concerned that the new transit station at the mall will only bring more crime to that area.

We now have a highway sign at the end of our street as people enter onto Independence. I have not seen a more useless sign in this city (and that is saying something).

Given what you have seen in this city and in others, what do you think the future holds for the East Side?

What do you think, readers? I know this blog has a good number of east-siders reading it regularly. Thoughts?

Here’s how I answered Diane:

Thanks very much for your note. I had heard from someone – though no one in a position of authority – that Eastland folks were negotiating with another grocery store to take over the Harris Teeter space. Which doesn’t get to your overall point, but does at least hold out the hope there won’t be another huge empty building there.

I just went through Sheffield for the first time the other day and was amazed at what an attractive neighborhood it is. It’s too bad it’s hidden by the commercial glop on Albemarle Road, etc. But with housing prices what they are in Charlotte, I expect Sheffield will be “discovered” any day now, so hang on.

Overall, though, I don’t know what the future holds for the east side. It’s a long-running story whose end, at least now, isn’t foretold.

To elaborate: The whole east side of Charlotte should be a long-term case study for some urban studies professor. East Charlotte got developed with a never-say-no-to-developers attitude on the part of city and county decision-makers. Now it isn’t urban enough to be “cool” to the growing market of people looking for city living, but isn’t new enough to attract people looking for suburban living.

The city has skimped on police coverage – everywhere, not just east Charlotte. But the more people feel unsafe, the less those east side neighborhoods maintain their property values.

The city hasn’t bitten the bullet and adopted affordable housing policies – such as inclusionary zoning – to effectively spread housing for the non-rich into all sectors of the city. So the east has a disproportionate share. (See above, re property values.)

The city (and the county, which for years had responsibility for this) skimps on nuts-and-bolts enforcement of housing codes and zoning rules. Even when enforcement happens, fines are laughable. Meanwhile, zoning inspection martinets spend their time shutting down a Newell farmer’s market that the community welcomed. Go figure.

The city and county, kneeling at developers’ feet, seriously overzoned for retail in east Charlotte. They passively OK’s rezonings to let retailers build new stores farther out, and abandon old ones.

I could go on, but I won’t. Schools alone are a subject worthy of someone’s doctoral dissertation.

Will those attractive, relatively affordable neighborhoods such as Sheffield begin attracting urban pioneers the way Plaza-Midwood and NoDa have, and now Merry Oaks and Briar Creek-Woodland? I’m optimistic – especially if the Central Avenue streetcar really gets built. Hang in there, east-siders.

Does East Charlotte have a future? That’s what reader and East Charlotte resident Diane Ruggiero asked me this week:

Hi Mary. I often read your column in the Observer and I was wondering what you think of what’s happening in East Charlotte.

I am a resident of Sheffield, a lovely little community surrounded by Independence, Albemarle, Sharon Amity, Central, and Eastway. The neighborhood is filled with lovely houses, mostly built in the 1950s (ours was built in 1954 and sits on a half acre of land).

We have lived in our current house for over eight years (and in an east side apartment before that) and we have seen the decline of the surrounding businesses. Fortunately, our neighborhood has held on.With the upcoming closing of a Harris Teeter [at Eastland mall], this leaves another empty big box on the east side. The old Upton’s building on Albemarle has been empty for close to 10 years. Hannafords is empty. Eastland Mall is on the decline and holding on as best it can. (Dillard’s is now only on one level and is an outlet store).

It is nice to see the multi-cultural aspect of Central Avenue, but with immigration such a hot topic, it makes me wonder about what will happen if people leave. I am concerned that the new transit station at the mall will only bring more crime to that area.

We now have a highway sign at the end of our street as people enter onto Independence. I have not seen a more useless sign in this city (and that is saying something).

Given what you have seen in this city and in others, what do you think the future holds for the East Side?

What do you think, readers? I know this blog has a good number of east-siders reading it regularly. Thoughts?

Here’s how I answered Diane:

Thanks very much for your note. I had heard from someone – though no one in a position of authority – that Eastland folks were negotiating with another grocery store to take over the Harris Teeter space. Which doesn’t get to your overall point, but does at least hold out the hope there won’t be another huge empty building there.

I just went through Sheffield for the first time the other day and was amazed at what an attractive neighborhood it is. It’s too bad it’s hidden by the commercial glop on Albemarle Road, etc. But with housing prices what they are in Charlotte, I expect Sheffield will be “discovered” any day now, so hang on.

Overall, though, I don’t know what the future holds for the east side. It’s a long-running story whose end, at least now, isn’t foretold.

To elaborate: The whole east side of Charlotte should be a long-term case study for some urban studies professor. East Charlotte got developed with a never-say-no-to-developers attitude on the part of city and county decision-makers. Now it isn’t urban enough to be “cool” to the growing market of people looking for city living, but isn’t new enough to attract people looking for suburban living.

The city has skimped on police coverage – everywhere, not just east Charlotte. But the more people feel unsafe, the less those east side neighborhoods maintain their property values.

The city hasn’t bitten the bullet and adopted affordable housing policies – such as inclusionary zoning – to effectively spread housing for the non-rich into all sectors of the city. So the east has a disproportionate share. (See above, re property values.)

The city (and the county, which for years had responsibility for this) skimps on nuts-and-bolts enforcement of housing codes and zoning rules. Even when enforcement happens, fines are laughable. Meanwhile, zoning inspection martinets spend their time shutting down a Newell farmer’s market that the community welcomed. Go figure.

The city and county, kneeling at developers’ feet, seriously overzoned for retail in east Charlotte. They passively OK’s rezonings to let retailers build new stores farther out, and abandon old ones.

I could go on, but I won’t. Schools alone are a subject worthy of someone’s doctoral dissertation.

Will those attractive, relatively affordable neighborhoods such as Sheffield begin attracting urban pioneers the way Plaza-Midwood and NoDa have, and now Merry Oaks and Briar Creek-Woodland? I’m optimistic – especially if the Central Avenue streetcar really gets built. Hang in there, east-siders.

Paul McBroom takes issue with an Observer editorial – the unsigned pieces that run on the Opinion Page – that I wrote last month.

The editorial said the historic North Davidson Street neighborhood known as NoDa (formerly North Charlotte) is at risk from intense, transit-oriented development. It said high-rise buildings, which are in general a welcome transit-oriented form of development, would create irresistible economic pressure through rising land values. Without some protections in place, it said, those rising values would doom the historic commercial area and its older, one- and two-story buildings that now house art galleries and restaurants. The rising values would also doom the surrounding small, historic mill village.

McBroom, who with wife Sharon Pate owns Neighborhood Properties and formerly ran Neighborhood Realty, took me on a quick NoDa tour last week to explain why he thinks high-rise development is the only thing that will save the area. I’m familiar with the neighborhood, having visited it off and on since it was a fading mill neighborhood knows as North Charlotte.

But I hadn’t driven through the residential streets in a few years. It’s booming with home renovations. Houses are being expanded, front and back. Some are losing their old mill-house look; others retain it, but with updates. There’s even an in-ground swimming pool going in next to an old mill house.

McBroom has been involved with NoDa properties for more than 15 years. “I came to NoDa early, but I wasn’t one of the first ones with the vision,” he says. He and Sharon own the Neighborhood Theatre building, a venue they launched in 1997 until leasing its management to others in 2003.

Here’s his view: He thinks high-rise buildings along the to-be-built light rail line – which will run along railroad tracks that cross 36th Street about a block from North Davidson – will help preserve the low-scale downtown area. In his view, high-intensity development at the tracks would provide an outlet for development pressure that otherwise would doom the historic commercial area.

Further, he thinks all the renovations, including the ones erasing the character of the old mill houses, are necessary in order to attract today’s homebuyers. Without those newcomers and their money, he says, the area still risks being perceived as a low-income, high-crime area. Right now it’s hot, but he says, “There are too many things that are fragile.”

He also says, “What’s happening on the other side of 485 is going to hurt NoDa more than anything that’s going to happen here.” He means NoDa’s competition for economic development dollars isn’t uptown, Elizabeth or Dilworth, but Ballantyne and farther out.

“What’s here now isn’t sustainable without drastic new growth,” he says. I hope he’s right, because I have real affection for the neighborhood. Do I think he’s right? Sadly, no. Since the 1970s I’ve watched rising land values in uptown Charlotte set off an economic domino game that swept away almost all the older, personality-filled buildings that many uptown boosters now longingly wish we had.

It would be nice if some reasonable blend of new and old can be crafted, with strategic forethought to protect the flavor of the area, but allowing enough new to provide the economic rebirth McBroom talks about. But I don’t see any of that planning happening, which is why I’m afraid for the neighborhood.

But this is one area where I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

The new development, its builders will say, will look like an English countryside village. It will be called Mayfair – a countryside village bearing the name of very pricey but decidedly urban London neighborhood.

Except, it’s nowhere near the countryside. It will be on Rea Road, deep in the heart of south Charlotte’s suburbia.

In England, of course, country villages are in the countryside – and the countryside is protected from development by powerful planning laws that set growth boundaries around each village. Unlike North Carolina, in England developers can’t fling subdivisions into the countryside. That’s why Americans think the English countryside is so beautiful they’re willing to buy into ersatz England in south Charlotte. They just don’t want to let our government try anything to protect our countryside. We want picturesque England without any of the hard political work required to create and maintain it.

And it’s not a village. It’s a cluster of 59 townhomes on 11 acres. It’s about a mile down Rea Road from a shopping center, which is decidedly not the same thing as the traditional English cluster of small shops. An English village has houses, stores, churches, pubs, schools – all within a close walk of one another. An English village is not a clump of townhouses, no matter how cutely designed with faux half-timbering, marketed to the relatively narrow slice of society, who can afford $300,000 to $500,000 dwellings.

Oh, and just in case you wanted that neighborly feel – you know, the kind of warm welcome you usually find if you visit an English village pub or tea shop, a sense of being invited to be part of their community, if only for a few hours? The “English countryside village” will be gated. You are not welcome there. Prince Charles and Camilla are not welcome there.

In England, a countryside village does not have a locked gate around it.

The motto of the state of North Carolina is Esse quam videre – to be rather than to seem. And in Charlotte, people wonder why the rest of the state thinks Charlotte isn’t really part of North Carolina.

The east and west sides of Charlotte have been afraid that the transit system the city is building will end up with classy light rail or commuter rail for all the other corridors but yucky buses for the East and West.

I’m just back from a two-day conference in Boston (Cambridge, to be precise) and one afternoon we ended up riding around the greater Boston area on the T – meaning using the heavy rail (that is, subway) system primarily but also taking a short hop on the new Silver Line. Bus. Bus Rapid Transit. In the argot of Transportation Jargon, it’s BRT.

If you travel much in Boston you probably already know the Red line goes to Harvard Square in Cambridge. The Green line goes to Fenway Park and to whatever they call Boston Garden these days. The Blue line goes to the aquarium and goes sort of near Logan Airport. Now, the new Silver Line goes to the airport, too, and depending on where you’re going it’s got a good chance of being a better choice, meaning fewer transfers, than Blue.

The Silver Line is – how to put this and still sound like a journalist? – gorgeous. The station is new and clean, which isn’t how you’d describe many of Boston’s aging subway stations.

These buses aren’t like the ones that ply the streets of Boston, Charlotte, or just about any other city of any size. They’re new, but just as important, they’re powered by overhead electrical lines, which makes them clean and quiet. They can also switch to diesel fuel. They’re designed so people hauling luggage don’t have to lift the suitcases to get from platform to bus. In the section of the Silver Line we went on, the bus had its own dedicated path, just like the subway does. In fact, part of the newly opened Silver Line runs through a tunnel that had to be carved underneath downtown Boston. Swedish boring equipment, I was told.

Some parts of the Silver Line that have to go into Boston traffic aren’t as rapid. And the Silver Line, at this point, is in two sections with no connection – a connection that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make.

One attraction of bus rapid transit is that it’s cheaper than laying rails. Seems to me, though, when you tunnel under a city and install electrical wires you’re making BRT kinda pricey. Even so, it was cheaper than just adding another subway link. And in 20 years or so – once the Big Dig is paid for, presumably – the Silver Line can be converted to rail if that seems important and there’s money available.

Of course, part of the reason to build the transit system in Charlotte is to attract growth to the transit corridors. Whether bus rapid transit will lure growth as well as rail is an open question and not one that should be dismissed. Plenty of other factors count, too, such as the affordability calculation, which takes into account based projected ridership and projected construction and operating costs. With fewer riders, you need less-expensive construction costs or you don’t get those all important federal dollars. The transit decision-makers can’t ignore those formulas.

But the headline is this: The bus transit wasn’t smelly or loud, like surface buses. Because it had its own path it was rapid. The transfer from rail to bus was seamless – just like switching to another subway line. If anything, the ride on the new bus transit was more attractive than the older rail.

Would it fly in Charlotte? I’m guessing it would.

The east and west sides of Charlotte have been afraid that the transit system the city is building will end up with classy light rail or commuter rail for all the other corridors but yucky buses for the East and West.

I’m just back from a two-day conference in Boston (Cambridge, to be precise) and one afternoon we ended up riding around the greater Boston area on the T – meaning using the heavy rail (that is, subway) system primarily but also taking a short hop on the new Silver Line. Bus. Bus Rapid Transit. In the argot of Transportation Jargon, it’s BRT.

If you travel much in Boston you probably already know the Red line goes to Harvard Square in Cambridge. The Green line goes to Fenway Park and to whatever they call Boston Garden these days. The Blue line goes to the aquarium and goes sort of near Logan Airport. Now, the new Silver Line goes to the airport, too, and depending on where you’re going it’s got a good chance of being a better choice, meaning fewer transfers, than Blue.

The Silver Line is – how to put this and still sound like a journalist? – gorgeous. The station is new and clean, which isn’t how you’d describe many of Boston’s aging subway stations.

These buses aren’t like the ones that ply the streets of Boston, Charlotte, or just about any other city of any size. They’re new, but just as important, they’re powered by overhead electrical lines, which makes them clean and quiet. They can also switch to diesel fuel. They’re designed so people hauling luggage don’t have to lift the suitcases to get from platform to bus. In the section of the Silver Line we went on, the bus had its own dedicated path, just like the subway does. In fact, part of the newly opened Silver Line runs through a tunnel that had to be carved underneath downtown Boston. Swedish boring equipment, I was told.

Some parts of the Silver Line that have to go into Boston traffic aren’t as rapid. And the Silver Line, at this point, is in two sections with no connection – a connection that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make.

One attraction of bus rapid transit is that it’s cheaper than laying rails. Seems to me, though, when you tunnel under a city and install electrical wires you’re making BRT kinda pricey. Even so, it was cheaper than just adding another subway link. And in 20 years or so – once the Big Dig is paid for, presumably – the Silver Line can be converted to rail if that seems important and there’s money available.

Of course, part of the reason to build the transit system in Charlotte is to attract growth to the transit corridors. Whether bus rapid transit will lure growth as well as rail is an open question and not one that should be dismissed. Plenty of other factors count, too, such as the affordability calculation, which takes into account based projected ridership and projected construction and operating costs. With fewer riders, you need less-expensive construction costs or you don’t get those all important federal dollars. The transit decision-makers can’t ignore those formulas.

But the headline is this: The bus transit wasn’t smelly or loud, like surface buses. Because it had its own path it was rapid. The transfer from rail to bus was seamless – just like switching to another subway line. If anything, the ride on the new bus transit was more attractive than the older rail.

Would it fly in Charlotte? I’m guessing it would.

If you get a chance to read my Urban Outlook column in Saturday’s Observer (it’s in the Opinion section of charlotte.com, starting Saturday) you’ll see – no surprise – I’m a huge fan of Jane Jacobs’ writing.

At a dinner Wednesday I sat next to a smart, accomplished local architect who was quibbling about Jacobs a bit, saying she didn’t have what he called real world experience, hadn’t ever designed any buildings and even at one point said her writing was essentially “fiction.”

I didn’t stab him with my salad fork, but I was tempted.

Obviously, anyone in any line of work learns from doing, whether it’s designing buildings for clients, drawing up city plans, writing editorials or building stone walls. Reality – whether in the form of structural engineering, planning department budget shortfalls, or looming deadlines – makes almost anything that any of us produce less than perfect. It’s true, Jane Jacobs never drew up city plans or designed buildings. And it’s true the Greenwich Village neighborhood that she observed most intently for “Death and Life of Great American Cities” wasn’t – still isn’t – a typical New York City neighborhood. But that doesn’t make her work fiction any more than it makes Lewis Mumford’s work fiction.

Jacobs wanted us to trust our eyes and our ears. She scorned, for example, urban planners’ veneration of “open space” as an abstract good, regardless of whether the “open space” ever got used by real people for anything other than muggings.

She saved some of her choicest invective for traffic engineers. In her 2004 book, “Dark Age Ahead,” she wrote that traffic engineers “have abandoned and betrayed science as it is understood. … It is popularly assumed that when universities give science degrees in traffic engineering, as they do, they are recognizing aboveboard expert knowledge. But they aren’t. They are perpetrating a fraud upon students and upon the public when they award credentials in this supposed expertise.”

She called it an “incurious profession” that “pulls its conclusions about the meaning of evidence out of thin air – sheer guesswork – even when it does deign to notice evidence.”

One example she gave: She didn’t drive and had to take taxis, which charge according to time and distance. To get to destinations in downtown Toronto using the elevated, limited access freeway invariably cost more than to get to destinations downtown avoiding the freeway. Her conclusion: Traffic engineers had planned roads without realizing that drivers have micro-destinations, not just the macro-destination of “downtown.” You could get to the outskirts of downtown quickly on the freeway, but you were slowed as soon as you hit the exit ramps and all the one-way streets, no-left-turns and other engineer tricks that were supposed to ensure a “speedy trip.” Instead, they’re impediments to getting where you want to go, she wrote, because someone apparently told traffic engineers the journey (speedy travel) matters more than the destination (getting somewhere efficiently).

She wrote: “In the background of this paradigm I see little boys with toy cars happily murmuring, ‘Zoom, Zooom, Zooooom!’ ”

Jacobs wanted people to see the world as it is, not just as they were taught in class. It’s a useful lesson.

I made a short comment in my previous post about the design of the ImaginOn building, asking what people thought. (Architects, here’s your chance.) One reply, from “Rebecca”:

“IMAGINON is GHASTLY. The ugliest building I have ever seen. it makes me ashamed every time I pass it. It looks like something my kids built in the woods out of scraps of castoff crap they found laying around. ICKY.”

Several comments complained about what they thought was ineffective use of tax money on the buildings. Others defended the building’s use – as a children’s library and the new home of the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte.

Here’s my take: I love libraries. And the Children’s Theatre is a gem of a resource for the city. We’re lucky to have it, lucky enough theater folks are willing to work there for what I’m pretty sure aren’t great salaries. Our daughter has taken classes at the CT and loved it, so I’m happy that worthy organization has much better, larger and better-equipped space.

I mourn the loss of the old building on Morehead because its walls oozed memories and history. The stairwell wall from the dressing rooms up to the stage was layer upon layer of signatures of Children’s Theatre participants from over the decades. The history had seeped into the bones of the building and was palpable for even the youngest users, and I’m sad that all those memories were just turned into rubble in one day.

BUT – you knew a “but” was coming, right? – it’s dumb to segregate “children’s books” from the main library in a whole other building. That just further isolates young people from larger society. Kids need more places where they’re integrated with, and interacting with, people of all ages from the elderly on down.

In addition, it’s user-unfriendly for two rather large groups: 1. Adults who want to browse and check out books WHILE they take children to the library. Why make them trudge between two buildings several blocks apart? 2. Kids aged about 8-15 who are good readers and move back and forth between “children’s books” and “young adult books” and “adult books.” We should all be encouraging more kids to read more advanced literature if they’re interested, not putting obstacles in their way.

And I confess, I think the building is junky looking. I’m afraid that in 10 years it will look dated, and in 25 years will even be shabby. Our 14-year-old loves it, however. So who’s right? Let the debate begin.

Attention, uptown folks: What WAS that? Or downtown folks. Doesn’t matter what you call the place. What WAS that thing I saw on Sixth Street last Thursday?

It was the carcass of what can best be described as a critter.

It lay on the south side of East Sixth, in the block east of College Street, sort of across the street from Brixx. It was brown and furry, with a rodent-ish face, and a furry tail. It was the size of a beaver.

The size and the fuzzy tail ruled out rat, possum or beaver and, based on a quick Google search, muskrat. It wasn’t a rabbit or hare; its ears were small and round.

Is it possible we have groundhogs – a.k.a. woodchucks, as in “How much would would a woodchuck chuck,” etc. – in uptown Charlotte?

“Fried, roasted or stewed woodchuck can be tasty,” a Canadian Web site, Hinterland Who’s Who, tells me. No mention of woodchucks having become urbanized like raccoons and possums. Even so, it looked more like a groundhog than anything else, though I’ve only seen them dead on the highway, or standing sentry beside mountain roads or being fêted at the Nature Museum on Groundhog Day.

Any theories, anyone?

Speaking of sights
And speaking of uptown sights, can there possibly be a less distinguished-looking county courthouse than the new Mecklenburg County Courthouse at Fourth and McDowell streets?

One last thought
One last uptown thought: ImaginOn? Love the building or hate it?
My quick take – it’s seriously suburban, with its odd scraps of useless lawn out front. And that grassy berm out back looks as if it was modeled on some suburban buffer in Weddington. It has no place in an urban setting.

Maybe someone with a competitive streak figured if Dallas has a grassy knoll, then Charlotte needs one, too.