krazeeboi

I think it's making good progress overall. The medical school in particular will truly be an asset and a needed institutional anchor for the campus.

I think one of the draws of Myrtle Beach is that it offers a Florida-like experience without having to actually be in Florida which, for one, is more hurricane-prone. Also Myrtle Beach is closer to inland states like Ohio and West Virginia which is where many transplants come from.

A new apartment complex will add more than 500 residents to the BullStreet District as soon as 2023. Work has begun on Bennet at BullStreet, a 280,000-square-foot community with 269 luxury apartments ranging from studio to three-bedroom units, according to a news release. The apartments, anticipated to open in 2023, will include a pet spa, a rooftop deck, an upscale clubhouse and a state-of-the-art fitness center, along with dedicated co-working spaces. Charlotte-based Proffitt Dixon Partners is the developer of the new complex, which will include a 45,000-square-foot, ground-floor retail space. Bennet at BullStreet will be located between Boyce Street, home to Segra Park, and Pickens Street in the 181-acre mixed-use BullStreet development, overseen by master developer Hughes Development Corp. of Greenville.

The six-month-old NoMa Warehouse in Columbia’s Cottontown neighborhood has plans to integrate a food hall concept into its space, with four to six mobile food vendors posting up. With hopes for an October launch, executive director Beth Lawson wants to host the vendors at the building for an initial two month tenure. To buoy this addition, the group has taken over a loading dock portion of its building that the landlord had previously used as storage. That space, which will offer up a covered outdoor area for use by vendors, will inform the area’s eponymous name, The Loading Dock at NoMa Warehouse.

The site of the old Jim Moore Cadillac dealership at 2222 Main St. could soon be transformed into a luxury apartment complex. Monday night, the city of Columbia’s Planning Commission voted to approve the site plan from Virginia based developer Commonwealth Properties. The plan also received approval from the city’s Design and Development Review Commission last week. The two three-story buildings will include 246 apartment units and four “live-work units.”

The city is reviewing plans for a new housing development in the Olympia neighborhood, which has become a popular hub for college students in recent years. Documents submitted to the city’s Design/Development Review Commission outline a plan to build seven single story homes on a set of vacant lots on Hayward Street, right across from the Olympia Mills and Granby Mills student apartment complexes.

I can understand to an extent what you mean when you mention Philadelphia, but it should be mentioned that the 1854 Act of Consolidation resulted in the then-two square mile city of Philadelphia consolidating with Philadelphia County. Since that time, the 130 square mile city and county of Philadelphia have been coextensive with each other. So in a way, compared to other historic coastal cities like DC, Baltimore, Boston, and San Francisco; legacy industrial cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Cleveland; and even Sunbelt cities like Atlanta and Miami, Philadelphia's density does include its Pennsylvania suburbs. Swaths of northwest and far northeast Philadelphia certainly have more of a suburban character.

All of the Piedmont and similar Piedmont-adjacent metros are low density. A major reason is due to the winding and curvy suburban roads and streets following the lay of the land with its gently rolling hills instead of being laid out on plats which would allow for greater density. Also the city of Atlanta has only begun seriously densifying this century but is primarily doing so in select areas with corridors that have sufficient capacity to accommodate increased density, and it remains to be seen if zoning changes in low density SFH neighborhoods will allow for a variety of other housing types that will help increase density.

UP has been around for a long time! So much for the prediction of Rock Hill overtaking Gastonia though. Concord came out of the gate swinging and hasn't looked back since.

Being from SC where most counties share the name of their county seats, I always thought it was weird that in NC, neither Asheville or Asheboro are in Ashe County, the town of Henderson is nowhere near Henderson County, Pittsboro is not in Pitt County, the city of Lenoir is not in Lenoir County, Graham is the Alamance County seat and not the Graham County seat, Mooresville is not in Moore County, etc. I'm sure there have been some mixups here that just haven't been very widely reported.

Finlay didn't even advocate for the project to get full funding in the legislature....I couldn't believe he said city leaders weren't persuasive enough and couldn't answer his questions. Like DUDE, YOU LIVE IN COLUMBIA and know how important the convention center expansion is. With "friends" like that, who needs enemies?

Ground has been broken and it is officially under construction.

Y'all surely love our beaches though.

Pretty exciting stuff for Rock Hill! This is a far cry from the way things were way back when I was but a lowly undergrad and recent graduate. Here are details from the article: The project would be developed at the former site of the Rock Hill Herald. Plans show it would include the development of 300 apartments at the site. That portion of the development calls for at least $30 million in investment, the agreement says. The plans also include a retail building of 10,200 square feet on White Street and a 17,700-square-foot development parcel for more commercial space. A parking garage is expected as well, and it would include at least 700 spaces, documents show. City leaders said at Monday's meeting that demolition at the site is scheduled to begin by late September. They also said many of the apartments at the project would be designated for affordable housing.

“In working with the city of Columbia, we have a number of folks interested in developing [the former Wells Fargo bank branch] property,” [state Sen. Dick Harpootlian] said, and a group of local business owners hold the option to buy the property. Columbia Councilman Will Brennan, whose district includes Five Points, said the potential developers have shared a rough draft of their plans for the site, which could include ground floor retail with offices above and a boutique hotel. A parking garage is also part of discussions, as studies have shown anywhere from 60 to 200 spaces could have a major impact on bringing in visitors previously deterred by having to circle the block in search of a spot. Under the senator’s proposal, the developer of the Wells Fargo property and others would receive the same 25 percent property or income tax credit allowed under statute for abandoned buildings. The credits usually last five to eight years, depending on whether its applied to income or property. Even without the tax credit, Brennan is confident the office building will be put to new use. He said the city has received half a dozen proposals from developers for its use, which council is expected to review in June. https://www.postandcourier.com/columbia/business/tax-credits-aimed-at-five-points-redevelopment-targeting-former-wells-fargo-building/article_76ef6638-af31-11eb-b737-875cf40a6b39.html

Chandler Cox, BullStreet project manager for master developer Hughes Development Corp., updated a Columbia Chamber of Commerce online audience on several projects on Tuesday. “There are seven construction crews onsite right now,” Cox said. “There’s definitely a lot of activity going on out there.” Iron Hill Brewing is in “full design” mode after a pandemic-related break. Demolition on university-owned buildings on the planned campus of the new medical school has been completed. In March, the university’s board of trustees voted to allocate $4.2 million toward the proposed 16-acre site, which would include a 130,000-square-foot medical building and a separate 162,000-square-foot research building and lab. The estimated $300 million project is also awaiting funding from the S.C. Legislature. Other ongoing infrastructure changes, including the connection of Freed Street to Bull Street, Boyce Street to Colonial Drive, and the installation of a new traffic signal as new tenants such as REI Co-op and Starbucks have opened their doors have made BullStreet more accessible to visitors and the surrounding community. Discussions are ongoing with other retail tenants, including restaurants that could fill the space next to Segra Park vacated in February 2020 by BullStreet’s first restaurant, Bone-In Barbeque, but nothing is ready to be announced yet. A “food and beverage concept” is planned for the former chapel on the BullStreet campus. TownPark at BullStreet, a phased townhome development, has entered its third phase. Initial construction is also underway on two parking garages, one a 220-car structure and the other a 660-car structure, which should be open next year.

Developers of the former Capital City Stadium site say they’re down to their final federal permit requirement and hope to begin work on the project this summer, starting with roughly $5.4 million in flood remediation in the Olympia and Grandby Mills neighborhoods. The planned development is for a 310-unit apartment complex, called The Ballpark, with 20,000 square feet of public retail space, said Andy Weddle of Connecticut-based Weddle Real Estate Investments. In addition, the developers will aid the city and county with off-site flood control measures, following the route of the Three Rivers Greenway downstream to the Congaree River. All of this is expected to take about eight months to complete, once the permit is issued, Weddle said. Demolition of the stadium and construction of the new one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartment units will likely be completed in 2023. Weddle said they’ve also started to get calls from potential retailers, including a clothing store and a gym considering the site. A rendering of apartments planned for the Capital City Stadium site at 301 S. Assembly St.

The project under Aughtry was getting a FILOT deal. While I understand the complaint about property taxes in general, there's no doubt some similar deal would be extended to other investors.

The parent company of firearms maker Palmetto State Armory inked a tax deal for a new facility in a former Midlands brake plant. Lexington County Council voted unanimously April 27 to provide property tax incentives for the company, described by Council Chairman Todd Cullum, as a “veteran-owned small-arms manufacturer,” in exchange for its $61.7 million investment into the former Akebono Brake plant in West Columbia near the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. The deal also comes with the promise of 150 new jobs.

CBRE's 2020 Scoring Tech Talent study largely focuses on the top 50 tech markets in the U.S. and Canada and utilizes several metrics to rank them in terms of the strength and competitiveness of their tech workforces. No SC city is among the top 50, but Columbia was ranked #13 of 25 smaller markets (according to relative strength) with growth potential and possible opportunities for expansion (pg. 46).

From what I've read, the owners of No Grease (which I patronized when I lived in Charlotte and still do whenever I visit and need to get lined up) were aware of the terms of the temporary lease, but because of their existing business relationship with Simon Property Group, they thought that the lease would be honored for the full year. They are a successful, well-regarded locally-owned business and it was smart of the owners to generate a bit of publicity in order to get a response from the community. They said they didn't believe they were discriminated against, but I guess they got a real taste of how shrewd business can be sometimes.

It looks like the model is saying it's SC with a correlation of 84 and Alabama coming in second at 79? That's...interesting and I'm not fully understanding how that was being calculated. That said, this was a predictive model for last year's election and thus didn't include any 2020 election data.

I think you're actually making my case for me here as far as Charlotte is concerned. For as long as many of us can probably remember, Charlotte has been especially concerned with its image which goes hand in hand with its long-held big city aspirations. Charlotte's fundamental approach to urban development was initially established on a disregard for its architectural/structural heritage (i.e., out with the old, in with the new) and further advanced via Hugh McColl's desire to have Charlotte look the part of a cosmopolitan, cultured city fitting to be the home of some of the nation's biggest financial institutions beginning in the 80s with the rapid ascent of NCNB (which bankrolled several of the first modern developments in Uptown) and First Union. From that point forward, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that, in large part, Charlotte's idea of progress revolved around getting items checked off its big city checklist primarily as a way of boosting its metropolitan bonafides (e.g., professional sports teams/venues, light rail, NASCAR HOF, coveted retailers, political conventions, the latest additions to the skyline, Wake Forest medical school, etc.) and how frequently it was mentioned on various "best cities" lists (which is why its exclusion from the Amazon HQ2 finalist list really stung). This is how a city with a reputation for being relatively progressive on matters of racial equality and inclusion as well as an economic juggernaut also becomes known for highly segregated public schools, riots that occurred in the wake of a police shooting of a newly-transplanted Black husband and father in 2016, and, as of a few years ago, very low economic mobility. Understand, I'm not saying any of this to beat up on Charlotte which I will always regard as my beloved first home away from home, but I think lofty, aspirational mottos adopted by state politicians in a much different state and a much different era, much less characterizations of humility and conceit assigned to states in that same very different era, should be regarded as the obvious anachronisms they are. Otherwise, things begin to sound not unlike online comments sections under any politicized news article wherein the historic roots of our two main political parties are mentioned as a way of castigating one and vindicating the other--and just so it isn't left unsaid, this is highly disingenuous. Okay maybe they don't start to sound THAT bad, but anyone who describes NC as the humble, modest underdog uncomfortably stuck betwixt patronizing and high-falutin' SC and VA in the second decade of the 21st century isn't really being completely honest. And NC should be proud of the immense progress it has made over the past century and shouldn't be made to feel bad about blowing its own horn as sheer boosterism (with some actual substance to it) has been a tried-and-true way for places in the South in particular to counter stubborn negative regional stereotypes and accelerate their progress . Atlanta may have established the blueprint for this "New South" MO more than a century ago, but it didn't take Charlotte and NC very long to adopt that same strategy and replicate many of Atlanta's successes.

For one, the presence of the Catawba River is a big reason. This article sums it up pretty well. An excerpt: Why not put the new settlement on the river? Well, the river was miles from the trading path, and - worse by far - not a navigable passage for trading craft... “The river was of negligible importance - until James Buchanan Duke figured out how to dam it up,” said Hanchett. When the company that would eventually become Duke Energy began building dams to supply textile mills with hydroelectric power in the early 1900s, it kicked off a major economic boom. And as Duke grew, so did the dams and lakes, until the biggest, at Cowans Ford, established Lake Norman in the early 1960s. The dams created huge bodies of water near Charlotte that were now available for recreation and lakefront homebuilding, including Lake Norman, Lake Wylie and Mountain Island Lake. Duke owned much of the waterfront, and its subsidiary Crescent Resources (since spun off, and now Crescent Communities) developed much of that land into luxury subdivisions like The Sanctuary at Lake Wylie. Most of the waterfront near Charlotte has thus remained in private hands with limited public access points, with the exception of a few areas such as Lake Norman State Park. Another reason Charlotte can feel disconnected from the water is the way the city’s airport grew and effectively blocked a lot of development from moving west. The least developed part of the county now is the stretch of land between Charlotte Douglas International Airport and the river, most of which is still forested or farmland and looks like it’s from another decade (There were goats wandering one of the roads the last time I drove through there). Most of the land still doesn’t have sewer lines, another major roadblock to development. Add to this the relative lack of east/west road connections between Gaston and Mecklenburg counties, the western portion of I-485 being the last to get built, and the move to conserve land in the Catawba River Basin starting in the early 90's that gave birth to what is now the Catawba Lands Conservancy; because of its efforts, nearly 17,000 acres of land within the vicinity of the river in NC is preserved, with a nice chunk being located in eastern Gaston County. Also Gaston County has historically had the largest textile industry within a textile-rich region which made it a bit more economically independent than other surrounding counties--which also means it got hit a bit harder with the decline of the industry, especially without any other sizable industries, institutional anchors, or spillover economic growth from Mecklenburg to help cushion the blow. York and Lancaster counties have the advantage of being located in SC and the ability to leverage differences in costs and regulatory structures with NC to lure jobs and residents, which is made easier by their proximity to I-485 early on, Ballantyne, and Lake Wylie; York County also has Winthrop as an institutional anchor. Union County benefits from proximity to booming, affluent southeast Charlotte and the earliest segments of I-485 to open. Cabarrus County was able to capture spillover growth from University and build upon that, especially with respect to retail, as well as the Speedway and motorsports industry. Iredell County attributes its growth to Lake Norman, the motorsports industry, and Lowe's HQ. Gaston is at a relative disadvantage with western Mecklenburg being the last frontier for development in the county due to land use patterns and lack of infrastructure, so there's no type of spillover Gaston could've benefited from due to increasing development on the other side of the county line (which resulted in more undeveloped land near the Catawba River that could be more easily put into conservation). Aside from that, it doesn't have the motorsports presence, a legacy corporate headquarters like Lowe's, or a sizable university like Winthrop to help drive growth (Belmont Abbey is nice, but rather small). Obviously things have changed within the past 10+ years as bordering counties get more crowded and congested in the parts closest to Mecklenburg and folks have realized how nice places in eastern Gaston (Belmont, Mount Holly) are, plus you have I-485 attracting more development to west Mecklenburg like the Whitewater Center, the outlet mall, the Amazon facilities. With the development of the River District, expect Gaston County to eventually look just like the other bordering counties.

Charlotte is cut from the same New South boosterism cloth as Atlanta, and it has paid off. Reputations and state mottos from the 18th century have become a bit outdated I'd say.