BobbyRobert

today's business journal says in a brief article in the Vue's new owners: "a groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday."

Had lunch at the Coffee Cup in University City today. It was PACKED and the food was good (just like the old place). Unfortunatly it was expensive! I think they jacked up all their prices. My vegi plate was $8 and Fried Chicken lunch was $9. Despite that, the cup is a nice addition to UC.

demolition has begun at the former longhorn site at Euclid and Morehead. I have not heard what is going up.

Sorry about the digression but I found some interesting data that suggests (to me) that gas and vehicle taxes only pay for 52% of road building expenses. The table is from the FHWA and can be found here: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/ohim/hs04/htm/hf10.htm Am I interpreting it correctly? If so wouldn't this be a useful bit of data in the sprawl / transit debate? Apologies if it has been covered before.

File this under unsubstantiated: Panera has abandoned its plans for the old Longhorn site. The building does not meet their requirements and the lease terms were too steep even for them. (this is from a business owner down the street, probably not the most objective source). Just wanted to perpetuate the rumor.....

drove by today, the foundation appears to be nearly complete and a very large crane is on site

try here for CMPD data (I have not used it in a while so I can't vouch for its currency): http://maps.cmpdweb.org/cmpdnet/map.aspx

I haven't heard anything about Radiator Specialty in a while. Has this died? (sorry for the parasitic post)

property and income taxes are much higher in Montgomery county MD than in Mecklenburg

Would Donald have access to this sort of news? (not saying he doesn't, just wondering if he would be in these kind of loops) I am concerned that this could cut both ways. I can see how Turmp's cachet and marketing machine will make the uptown market much more visible and attractive, but I can also see a case where this rumor could scare off a bunch of less well financed high-rise developers (The vue?). I am admitedly out of my area here, I hope I am wrong.

I am not sure that is fair. Long before UrbanPlanet existed the city and earlier incarnations of Bank of America financed the Cherry neighborhood association to allow it to purchase properties and rent them at subsidized rates. The sale of some of these properties is what we are currently debating. While I suspect that we would all agree this effort failed to maintain the neighborhood in livable condition the association certainly was able to preserve the neighborhood for an additional decade or so. I guess the question we are struggling with is how much effort should we expend to preserve the culture of a neighborhood.

I can't speak to NoDa specifically but North Carolina's mill villages (and NoDa was one) were almost entirely white, so I would be surprised if there was a racial component to gentrification in North Davidson. Folks with more knowledge of Charlotte history feel free to correct me. EDIT: This note refered to a post that has been removed

This is one of the most thoughtful discussions of gentrification I have ever read (and I have seen a lot). Thank you! I would like to point out that we need to be careful about what we choose to preserve. Why do we want to maintain Cherry in its current state? Given the amount of wasted space in the neighborhood (best exemplified by its dozens of boarded up houses) something must change, thoughtful development is (IMO) the neighborhoods only hope of survival. The NoDa example is an informative one, its artsy vibe was manufactured by displacing some of the mill workers who were the first inhabitants of the neighborhood. The selective preservation of the past in NoDa's case allows all of Charlotte to grow beyond the neighborhoods poverty, segregation and paternalism and introduce outsiders to some of the neighborhood's proud heritage. The culture of old North Charlotte would have likely dissapeared entirely if we had left the neighborhood to disintegrate. Despite my opinion that neighborhood change (aka gentrification) is inevitable (and mostly positive) in a growing urban environment I would much prefer to sit on a bar stool in Pat's Time for One More than listen to another hippie drum circle.

well said.

sorry, I was being lazy, I meant to say Park Rd shopping center store. Thus the source of my question. I am curious if HT thinks the demographics of the scalybark area are going to change.

Has anyone gotten wind of HT looking for a South blvd site around Poindexter for a full sized store? I heard that rumor a few months ago but nothing since. The site makes sense to me from a location analysis perspective (the east blvd and Park Road SC stores seem to be as big as they can be), but I don

A quick check of any chart (or even google earth) reveals that this is not the case. North Carolina's ports are significantly more distant from deep water than any other on the east coast (save Baltimore and Philadelphia). Morehead City is not a pirme spot on the east coast (there is very little deepwater space available for container movements ) , throwing money at it with the hopes of making it into the next Charleston would be a waste (unless Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah and Wilmington somehow reach capacity).

Morehead city's future will always be limited as a port. No matter how may mainland improvements you construct the port will always be in the shadow of Cape Lookout, a shoal (sandbar) that extends 30+ miles into the Atlantic. This means that any ship running along the coast would need to navigate around the shoals (30 miles each way) to get to the docks in Morehead. This is not an insignificant detour (an extra 6+ hours of non-revenue producing sailing time). Land based maps generally don't depict the shoal so Morehead city appears to be more accessible to sea lanes than it actually is. Given Morehead City's really inconvenient location (compared to Norfolk and Charleston) it is unlikely to become anything more than a bulk freight terminal (unless, Charleston, Norfolk and Wilmington reach capacity)

Anyone have information on how the neighborhoods recently opened projects have sold. Everytime I pass through the neighborhood it seems strangely quiet....

the original Wall Street journal article on this generally dismissed the possibility of this happening. http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB1154...1170521304.html (subscription required) The article suggested the timing of this was 'earlier this summer' and that the current usair (well America west) ceo (Doug Parker) wanted to leverage is currently high stock price to acquire delta assets on the cheap. The merger overtures were driven by the recognition of the need for dramatic consolidation in the domestic airline industry and Parker did not want to be left behind. one quote from the WSJ article: "Mr. Grinstein [the delta CEO] has expressed doubt that a Delta-US Airways merger would pass antitrust muster because Delta's Atlanta hub competes for passengers with US Airways' Charlotte hub, a person familiar with this thinking said. I agree that this would be a bad move by USair due to heavy overlap between routes. A better candidate (IMHO) would be Northwest but they have some serious labor issues to deal with. However, if airlines do continue the wave of consolidation that was begun with America West and Usair then Charlotte sits is a VERY bad place given its low o-d traffic and situation in the shadow of the international gateways of ATL and Dulles.