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deaconator

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Posts posted by deaconator

  1. Sorry to have offended anyone.  I don't know anyone for whom $30 per month would make a difference.  I guess there are a lot more destitute people in NC than I thought.

     

    You don’t know anyone? Who gives a hoot who you know. No one. Congratulations you are one of the most ignorant, selfish, out of touch people in all of North Carolina.

     

    I’m glad you live in North Carolina and you’ve only been to Myers Park and Chapel Hill in your time here too. If you are so fortunate to never have to rub elbow with someone in the other 95+% then I would suggest you look into some service opportunities to broaden your horizons.

     

    Oh and you don’t need to know anyone. Just do some basic math. Look up what minimum wage is, and figure what expenses might be for say a single mom with 3 kids and take it from there. Could $30 make a difference? What percentage of their net income is that?

     

    apologies for getting off topic more but dang...

     

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  2. Yes the Publix finally looks different than what it did in the pictures above.

    I’m sort of surprised by the success of that HT wine bar. It doesn’t have a cool location, windows/views/decor. It just kind of sits there next to the frozen foods. I was expecting something at least sort of along the lines of the SP Whole Foods or the Myers Park HT. But I guess if people need wine to shop at this death trap of a grocery store, I can understand. Publix should do great here...just hurry up already.


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  3. The map is cool but pretty pointless in terms of the true market that the team would really serve as fans/spectators.

    It looks like the area for Charlotte though, would be pretty close to the exact shape of NC/SC combined minus a few areas around the borders and add in a few spots in SW VA. So you're talking 15 million people which is the upper half of that list.


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  4. Publix construction started below grade and is now just cracking the surface with some rebar and concrete walls - hopefully it will come along quickly at this point. Seems to have been a long time coming!

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  5. 1 hour ago, Jack152 said:

    I find it hard to believe that "educated, passionate" Charlotte Independence fans would snub a local MLS franchise, out of some allegiance to a team that has only existed for 2 years.

     

    12 minutes ago, elrodvt said:

    I've never been to an Independence game due to the crappy facilities situation and I usually don't drive far if at all.

    I would become a "supporter" if this came about. I bet there are a lot more people in my boat.

    Good point - and I'd be in the same boat as you.  And maybe that is good enough, I don't know.  But from what I am picking up from the tone of all those involved - McPhillamy, City/County government, Smith, soccer fans on here and on Twitter than actually know something about soccer - I really think that Smith needs to work with the community to build something successful here.  His crapty interviews and YouTube videos are not going to cut it.  He already has a lot working against him.

    8 minutes ago, ricky_davis_fan_21 said:

    No mention of the success of the Premier League teams playing preseason games in charlotte. 

    Thought the exact same thing, and that was an easy one.  He doesn't get it. 

  6. Again FWIW but if you believe the Indy ownership group they gave details of the talks when trying to partner with the Smith's they may be looking for a quick ROI on the team.  Apparently MLS only requires 25% of the expansion fee upfront and then it's built into the cost of operating the franchise throughout the remainder off the balance.  Also the team would pay $12.5M toward the stadium up front.  So essentially they thought the rising team values they'd make a $49M up front investment to bring a club here and flip their share for hundreds of millions in a few years to a new majority owner as franchise values continue to go up.
    Getting into tin foil hat conspiracy theory territory but I do not see their passion for the sport as with some other bids.  However to end on a positive for the Smith's, I do like the sports portfolio of the architecture group they chose for the rendering that was released.


    I think the Smiths would have been well-served to bite the bullet and actually partner with the Charlotte Independence group in making their bid. I'm not sure which side was at fault for not forging this partnership, but this COULD be yet another deal-killer. Look at all the other bids and how they are strongly linked to a lower level team, their organization, supporters, season ticket holders, etc.

    But instead, the Smiths opted to alienate the most loyal soccer-focused investors and more importantly, the biggest soccer fans in the city which could have been your ground game of activists to galvanize the rest of Charlotte to become future MLS fans.

    At this point, you may end up with a team that has no fans, or at least no educated, passionate fans.



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  7. So what was the final City of Charlotte's decision, and the Smiths' response? Is Marcus just saying he'd pony up the extra dough?


    See the article from the CBJ last night - the mayor more or less says don't expect the city to give any money towards a 2017 bid, but they'd talk about a bid in a future year. Meanwhile, seems like the Smiths aren't saying a word about where that money would come from "if" the city doesn't pony up the cash.

    But why would the city put it cash now? Smith went forward without them so he needs to find a way to make it work, and I'm sure at this point that will be the story from the city.

    From the MLS perspective - I'm guessing that if they don't get more clarity from the greater Charlotte bid situation in the coming weeks/months, they will eliminate it (if it's not already out). A lot of the bids are flawed though, so I think the Smiths need to get things ironed out and go for it.

    I just worry that we are gonna end up at a financial standoff and it's going to kill this thing.



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  8. 2 minutes ago, kermit said:

    my guess is that the city assumed the county would vote no. Since the county is the landowner the city would never need to vote. Now that the county pulled the rug out from that plan the council needs to figure out how to make a rational and defensible decision. I am guessing that the hotel and restaurant lobby prefers MLS to most other uses for the tourism tax.

    I'm confused - the county didn't pull the rug...the voted yes. And the city needs to make a decision about what? They killed the deal (as far as getting city money anyway).

     

    This whole thing has worked out very strangely...I think most citizen's would be much more opposed to property tax revenues being used on this than the tourism tax - which is specifically supposed to be used for something like this.  Really strange to me too that the city let the county go ahead and vote and then ten minutes later, the mayor kills the whole thing.  I guess that's politics for you?  She'll be able to say she saved us all from being taken advantage of by Smith and the MLS.

  9. I was already finding it hard to believe that all parties involved would be able to get their act together by January 31st.  After reading that article, they actually made it sound logistically impossible that this will happen in time?

    There must be more to the story behind closed doors though, because why would they be wasting their time otherwise.  Maybe multiple cities are asking for an extension..who knows.  Seems like it would be in the best interest of the MLS to extend the deadline unless they already have a good idea of what what they are going to with their franchises.  

  10. Just to kind of bridge the conversation going on over on the BLE thread - there seems to be a fair amount of agreement that the Hal Marshall site would be a bad use of the property and 4 stadiums inside 277 is basically overkill (not quoting just kind of summarizing what I got out of it) - and also that Memorial is our only option right now but NODA or optimist park could be even better in a perfect world.

    Here's what I'd add - let's dig up the whole Queens Park concept and orient everything else around it. It would be the greatest thing to ever happen to Charlotte - integrating a huge urban oasis park, the Blue Line, ultimately linking with Amtrak and Gateway and future rail destinations, hopefully a progressing 1st ward/north end, an MLS site....

    Let's nail this down in two weeks so we can get that soccer stadium ...[emoji108]

    And all of a sudden Charlotte is a world-class, transit oriented, urban euro feeling, tourist destination, queen of the south. [emoji14]

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  11. Agreed, go_vertical. Time is running way too short for scrapping the plan and starting over with a new (vastly inferior) location just so they can fix their Eastland dilemma. They'd be better off finding a site in the north end with light rail connectivity and potential to revitalize the area. Although there's probably not time for that either.

    Does anyone know if there are any good active MLS forums out there discussing expansion in general? Glad to see that one blogger likes our chances but I'm interested in others perceptions.


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  12. Google maps says UNCC to 485@South Blvd is 1 hr for departure from UNCC at 4:48 until 5:38. I think that would be generous. I avoid 77 south during that time at all costs.


    I don't think the point would literally be to get a bunch of people from Fort Mill to UNCC anyway. And even for that though, it wouldn't be terribly worse than driving in rush hour


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  13. Property tax re-assessments are set to take place 1/1/2018. The last re-assessment was 1/1/2011 (the low of the recession for housing in Charlotte). I'm sure it is not near enough, but there could be big money generated with the next reassessment. 


    Ok well let's start these conversations with other counties now because good luck selling huge property tax increases to meck residents (as high as they already are)


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  14. 1 hour ago, SouthEndCLT811 said:

    MLS isn't interested in the burbs anymore.  Hopefully he at least realizes that.  They put stadiums in the burbs late 90's earlier 2000's and have been moving back toward center city with every expansion since 2010 when the Philadelphia Union put their club out in Chester, PA.  All others (Montreal, NYCFC, Orlando, Portland, Vancouver, Atlanta, Minnesota, LAFC) are in downtown or neighborhoods accessible to center city via public transit.  That leaves Memorial or some other site likely near Uptown and either streetcar or blue line accessible.

    Us Indy fans have been talking about this for years.  Fun other alternatives (excuse my paint skill graphic design), Scaleybark Crosland site

    CfaIdA_WIAEQx0O.jpg:large

     

    This is awesome.

    I'd be interested in one of these for the NODA area or somewhere along the BLE.  Any chance you could make one of these for the area just west (or north really) of the 36th street station - it could have access to the BLE, North Tryon, and the Greenway there

    Memorial is ideal in a lot of ways - but can being on the gold line really be considered 'transit' accessible?  You would have a lot more access to people on the blue line, especially over time.  Maybe this is more what Smith is thinking at this point - he definitely doesn't seem too high on Memorial/Elizabeth.

     

    Side note: Count me out if its a Speedway site

  15. Does anyone have any info on if something is planned for a huge tract that has now been cleared on Wendover between the police station and the medical office complex? I think there may have been some old houses and such that faced the other direction previously but now it looks like they have a bunch of acreage oriented toward Wendover to develop?


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  16. That is awesome that they have all those imaginary rail lines to all those places, but it really sucks that our only light rail line that actually exists won't have any direct connection to any of them.

    No expert here but it seems pretty inefficient (or just lacked long term planning) to have gateway and the blue line be separated by 7 blocks.


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