All those people buying up condos in those uptown towers ’cause they love the view? Guess what. Nothing in city regulations can stop the owner of some parking lot next door from putting up a tower to block the view.
I guess it’s only a major point if you’re one of the people buying in to places with names like “the Vue,” but it’s a great example of our city planning policies being a day late and a dollar short.
The point came up Tuesday night in a forum called “Towers: Is Charlotte Losing Or Finding Its Soul?” at the Levine Museum, put together by an interested group that calls itself the Civic By Design forum. Architect/developer David Furman, who’s building Courtside among other uptown projects, was asked about the problem of shadowing, which you get in places with a lot of tall towers.
The questioner wanted to know what’s being done here?
“I think nothing,” said Furman.
City planner Kent Main, in the audience, confirmed that. We do not have any regulations on that, he said. One reason buildings in New York City are terraced back from the street, he said, is because of those kinds of regulations requiring sunlight and shadow studies. But, he said, he didn’t think Charlotte had reached that point yet.
He’s right. We haven’t. But here’s the problem with that kind of thinking: By the time Charlotte has reached that point, with everyone wanting a tower on every uptown plot, how hard is it going to be for City Council to buck the pressure they’ll get from all those developers planning to build all those towers? Setting sunlight rules and viewshed rules will limit the ability of some property owners to build everything they want, wherever they want it.
The time to adopt regulations is now, before the pressure gets so intense.
How important is the view to potential condo buyers uptown? Patrick Kelly, a young architect who works with Civic By Design forum coordinator Tom Low, went around to a bunch of for-sale condo tower projects uptown to hear their sales pitches.
His conclusion: “They’re all selling the view.”
Betcha all those buyers will be a tad ticked when they learn their “view” has no protection. Welcome to Charlotte.