elvigy

I flew to NYC last Tuesday and flew back in on Monday of this week. All the moving sidewalks were working both times I went through as well. Perhaps they were only temporarily out of service for maintenance or something.

From all I've read here, the problem is not the demand for 210 Trade. Sales seemed to be OK. Infighting between Ghazi and F&C, inexperience with these types of projects, and bureaucratic issues have gotten us to where we are.

Good news! This is one I definitely can't wait to see topped off. It will instantly redefine the Charlotte skyline all by itself.

No, no PDAs in Charlotte for me and my partner. It is simply not an option in Charlotte. At the very least, it causes a LOT of staring and I'm actually fairly shy by nature and don't like attention. We are much more open and affectionate when we travel (depending on where we go, of course). It's not a problem in NYC or DC. Even small areas of Atlanta are OK. Charlotte just isn't there yet. At least not in any of the neighborhoods we frequent.

I voted for Neal as well. I pretty much figured it was a lost cause, but to the best of my memory it's the first time I've gotten to vote for an openly gay candidate for anything ever. So that was pretty cool. As for Gov, I won't vote for Pat. I just can't. Maybe NC Dems are just as craven as Republicans on gay issues, but I tend to doubt it. They might not be pro marriage rights, but they are way better than NC Republicans. I have a feeling that if the anti-gay marriage amendment were to come up again, Pat would be right there signing it while Bev would find some way to quietly sweep it under the table or consign it to committee hell. I could be wrong though. Edit to ask-Has Perdue taken a stand on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?

I kind of agree with cityboi in the sense that it irks me when people refer to Charlotte as medium sized. I think of it as a big city. But then I realize that it's a very subjective thing anyway. It doesn't surprise me that someone in Atlanta or NYC thinks of Charlotte as medium sized. To them, we always will be. But I can tell you that people in Mt. Holly, for instance, think of Charlotte as a big city. My company has an office in Mt. Holly and many of our staff and customers simply are not willing to drive into Charlotte to our main office because they don't like dealing with the traffic and crime of the big city of Charlotte. (As if they'd be mugged the minute they crossed the city line, but I digress). Heck, by historical standards, Charlotte is actually massive. It wasn't until the modern era (say, the last 50-100 years) that city populations around the world started to skyrocket.

There would really be no point in throwing more money into the pot just to cover up a mistake. I seriously doubt that they'd get Little involved, create a website, update the website, have Little update their website, etc, just to cover up a whoopsie. Especially since they already said earlier that the project was on hold. All that would have been required was an additional press release saying "Sorry, folks, we goofed and didn't pull the ad in time. The project remains on hold but please do enjoy the pretty pictures." I'm pretty sure quite a few people, including Doug Smith, have tried to contact them for an official statement and, to me, their silence speaks volumes. In addition, as of the time that the project was officially announced to be on hold, no rendering had been publicly released. So now we have a rendering (a first for this entire project), a website that is being updated (also a first, since the website never even got off the ground when this was supposedly being seriously considered), and a lack of any denial from Trump. To me that means that there is some forward movement on this. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a long shot, but to dismiss it out of hand just seems to be ignoring the few clues we've got that there is some kind of progress. It would be hard to say what the likelihood of this getting started really is, but IF the Trumps have a major tenant lined up for the office part, and a commitment from a hotel, and IF they believe the condo section would be at least partially filled by the theoretically relocated employees in the office tower, then I can see this having a good chance. Without those elements, I'd lean towards snowball/hell side.

Ignoring the "debate" over the term recession, it really doesn't matter if we are or are not in a recession. Each project in the country is evaluated on its own basis, not on the status of the national economy. For example, the Empire State Building was built during the Great Depression. If Trump has his ducks in a row, this project will happen. If he doesn't, then it won't. They say all politics are local, but that saying applies to real estate as well.

Um, you left out the part where I did say that the Trump project seems even more ambitious than One Charlotte, the difference between the two being that the Trump project is a much more mixed use development.

Well, again, this stuff wouldn't even be opening until well after the current downturn has ended, unless this lasts for several years which would be pretty bad. And of the other condo projects, only 1 has been cancelled/postponed due to lack of sales-the One Charlotte tower, which really was a bit ambitious for Charlotte and had some basic problems in location. 300 South Tryon's problem was more related to the office part as I understand it. And 210 Trade had bureaucratic problems which have supposedly been resolved. The Vue is on track. The Park seems to be suffering from financial problems unrelated to actual sales. But to be honest, though, after my initial burst of excitement, I am adopting a wait and see attitude as well. It does seem even more ambitious than One Charlotte. I think the fact that it's a mixed use project will hopefully make the difference, though, and get it off the ground.

Just to comment on the timing of this (possible) tower, I tend to agree with those who've speculated that this might actually be a good time to start a new tower in Charlotte. Large companies like Trump don't just freeze in place when things go bad in the economy. They will regroup and focus on more sure-fire projects (at least, as much as anything can be considered sure-fire in real estate) while suspending the riskier projects. They don't just stop operations and wait for the good times to come back. And as someone else has pointed out, somehow Charlotte has managed to continue increasing the value of most homes in the area. That obviously speaks to some kind of underlying strength in the local economy making Charlotte definitely a place to look at if you're searching out those "sure-fire" locations to start another project. A similar risk vs reward strategy plays out in the stock markets. Speculators try to get a feel for where the bottom is, buy then and ride the wave up before selling. And there are quite a few people who think that the economy has reached bottom and is poised to begin recovering later this year or perhaps next year. To be honest, I tend to be more in the doubtful category, but we'll see. Anyway, my point being, the Trumps may have decided that we've reached bottom, Charlotte looks fairly good now and will probably be smoking hot on the next upturn and maybe they should get moving now. Who knows. But I can definitely see the justification for striking while the iron is cool so to speak.

I'm another gay Obama supporter. I originally supported Edwards but once he dropped out I just was completely on the fence. I wavered back and forth between Clinton and Obama. But now I'm pretty firmly in Obama's camp. I just really really don't like the negative turn that the Clinton campaign has taken. I don't understand why Democrats feel the need to tear each other down. Republicans don't do it. Anyway, I was pretty peeved about the McClurkin thing as well, but have forgiven him for it since with his speech to a (mostly) black audience saying that gays need to be treated better by the black community (paraphrasing what he said, of course). I'm also just a little uncomfortable having a line of Bushes and Clintons in the White House for so long. After all it was Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush and now another Clinton? I just don't think that's a good thing for Democracy.

I have to admit I have nothing to contribute to the conversation except "OMG-please let this happen!" Don't check the forum for a couple days and this happens!

In addition, a 50% increase in unemployment makes it sound really bad, but if the rate was low 10 years ago, say around 3%, then a 50% increase means that the rate now is 4.5%, which is still pretty good. I certainly haven't heard or read anything to indicate that the Charlotte metro area is undergoing a massive unemployment problem. There's a website with monthly statistics for the Charlotte-Gastonia metro area- http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/...a/lauMT37167403 That pretty much bears out what I'm saying. Yes, it would be nice if we could stay at 3%, but 4.8% (the statistic for Dec. 2007) is really not bad. Unless you are one of those that are unemployed of course. Our biggest weakness is the crime rate. Seems to be an ongoing problem that we haven't gotten a handle on. Edit-I'd also like to point out that the 10 year comparison they chose really does hurt us. If they had picked a five year comparison (2003) we would actually be a lot less miserable, since the unemployment rate in 2003 was about 7.0%, meaning we've seen an improvement of about 50% since then.

I don't think it's possible to predict vacancy rates 2 years out. There are so many unknowable factors (status of economy, relocating companies, health of our banks, blah blah blah) that looking forward two years based solely on 2 or 3 single factors won't be anywhere near accurate, imho. If it was that simple, real estate wouldn't be the tricky business it is. You'd simply do the math and know where to build.

Clicking on Charlotte in the list lets you read the comments. There are only 3 and 2 of them are old, from the time of the whole Angels in America fiasco. Only 1 seems recent and it does point out that things are a little better. I don't think Charlotte is quite as conservative as the reputation it seems to have.

I think the past few days in the financial markets have dealt another tough blow to the Signature Tower. With BoA buying out Countrywide just to staunch the flow of blood, and with the markets worldwide tanking because they think the US is most definitely heading into recession, I think any lender considering backing the Sig is going to want close to iron-clad proof that this won't become another splotch of red ink. That is, I wouldn't count on this even being approved by any lender without at least 70-80% of the units contracted out. For the foreseeable future, the banks and other lenders are going to be shoring up their assets while trying to minimize, hide or divest themselves of their problems. I just don't see any major project getting started during 2008 (barring some kind of guarantee of a return on the money). And from everything I've seen and read on this project, it just doesn't have that going for it.

Comparing Charlotte's convention center to those particular three seems a bit unfair. Vegas and Orlando are huge tourist destinations and they can use that to their advantage to draw conventions. Chicago is, of course, the third largest city in the country and is a globally-connected city. While I do think that the Charlotte Convention Center should be bigger (and should have been built bigger from the start), I don't think we'll ever be able to compete with the convention-drawing power of those three. I'd say we now compete more with the middle tier of cities in the US and could, with time, compete with some but not all of the largest cities. We could potentially draw conventions away from Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, etc. but I don't think we'll ever have the draw of Vegas or NYC or Orlando simply because we don't have the tourist appeal of those places.

I hate to be a naysayer, but there's no way an openly gay man will be elected to the Senate from NC. I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see it. The sad thing is, Dole is vulnerable and someone else (maybe Kay Hagan) might be able to bring her down. Maybe I'm being overly negative about my fellow North Carolinians, I don't know.

Hmm, the original is not bad, imho. Not great, but I definitely wouldn't call it unattractive. Why all the revisions though? And I hesitate to even call them revisions-the current design is totally different than the original. More a complete overhaul than a revision. Was it done to try and attract more buyers, assuming the original wasn't sparking as much interest as hoped? Or was it revised for other reasons? If this has been addressed somewhere in the previous 126 pages of this thread, my apologies.

Haha, talk about targeting a niche audience for advertising.

Nothing substantial. I did read somewhere that they were looking at another place somewhere still in the Plaza Midwood area, though. I wish I could remember where I read it. But basically they did have a specific place in mind, but weren't too sure yet that they would be able to get it. At the time of the article, they were planning on having a meeting within a day or two to discuss it and make some kind of decision. I haven't heard more since then. And sorry for my crappy memory, but that really was the gist of the article. It was probably something I read in the Observer, so maybe do a search on their website.

And, just to inflame the whole argument about whether or not Charlotte is a financial center or not, the article refers to us as, well, I'll let them speak for themselves... "...is the largest U.S. financial center after New York City and home to two of the largest banks in the world, Wachovia and Bank of America." Just to be clear, I don't seriously present this as evidence that we are that big of a financial center. As argued previously, we may (or may not) have the statistics available to prove that. But it certainly shows that Charlotte is THOUGHT to be a major financial center. At least among a certain segment of the population. And they say perception is reality.

Meh, I wouldn't worry about the comments. You could put a video of Mother Teresa feeding orphans on Youtube and you'd get negative comments from some of the trolls over there. Though I agree with the idea that the video really didn't do a good job of presenting the vibrancy of Charlotte.

And, er, just to clarify my own position, I don't personally believe this had anything to do with race. I just think he shmoozed his way into the job. And I would have preferred Bailey. It looks bad on Democrats because it looks to the public like they care more about rewarding sucking up than looking out for the best interests of the county. We'll see how he does and hopefully, as mentioned above, with all eyes on him he'll run a clean department. Though with his history of hiding things he doesn't want the public to see, I have my doubts.