nicholas

Having Dundon involved puts Raleigh as the frontrunner over Charlotte and Nashville imo. I don't get the sense that there's any serious effort to bring MLB to Charlotte by anyone with the ability to do so, and Nashville taxpayers have spent a toooooon of money funding other professional sports recently. The downside of having Dundon involved is that I'm sure he will push to have a stadium located near the PNC Arena. The best spot would probably be Downtown South which is still in the very early stages of development. Land was already set aside there for a potential soccer stadium and it is on the southern BRT corridor (can't remember if it's already funded or not). Another option would be part of the state government complex on Peace St across from Seaboard which was briefly floated for an MLS team, would require substantial building/parking deck demolition and rerouting a few roads.

Down comes the DoubleTree

No thread on this surprisingly. Two 20 story mixed use towers just outside of downtown. Will bring 675 residential units and additional restaurant/retail options. https://wraltechwire.com/2023/06/05/700-million-mixed-use-project-near-dix-park-secures-financing/ Cranes are up, visible from S Saunders.

A few weeks ago

If I remember correctly, a little under 20 years ago there was a similar proposal for that shopping center. Everything was going to be torn down and Whole Foods would be relocated to a new building within the development. Then 2008 happened and the plaza was gradually updated cosmetically instead.

Probably to make left turns from Pleasant Grove as inconvenient as possible because "safety" and "traffic flow".

Harris Teeter on 49 on the other side of campus isn't far though.

To me, it is yet another example of complete incompetence of Charlotte area infrastructure. A month or so ago, a motorcyclist got launched over the middle barrier on that stretch of 277 due to a pothole right in front of an already massive bump onto one of the bridges. Miraculously he survived, but roads like that pose a much greater risk to everyone due to tire blowouts, suspension failure, etc from jarring impacts from the road. Plus tires aggressively dart around in the grooves left by shaving off the top layer of asphalt.

Also worth noting that Charlotte has a massive sportscar/motorcycle scene that punches far above its weight. By and large, car/bike enthusiasts prefer ICE-powered vehicles and are not going to spend $50k+ on a characterless EV when they could get a Corvette or Supra instead. Plus all of the urban cowboys/cowgirls in their needlessly huge and modified-to-the-point-of-being-completely-useless brodozers and Broncos/Wranglers...

^that looks like a textbook stolen car scenario. Car crash followed by what appears to be the driver fleeing the scene (bystanders would typically move back a bit but will be focused on the accident that just happened, not just blindly running off). Looks like a Dodge Challenger which is known to be targeted by car thieves.

Don't know him personally but have seen him at car shows and just randomly driving around. He also has an Audi R8 and Ferrari 488 Spider.

I'll be stunned if this project makes it to completion. More likely scenario is that Vinfast fails and the site is taken over by a different (established) automaker to produce their own vehicles.

That's a Viper ACR which is one of the craziest cars ever built. Production ended several years back but this was arguably the last ultra high performance driver's car, as no automatic transmission of any kind was ever offered. The early Vipers back in the '90s had a reputation of being "widowmakers" due to being extremely fast and even more difficult to control, but by this final generation the Viper had been pretty honed-in, and for a time held several records at various high profile racetracks around the country. The owner of that car takes it to some of the regional tracks like CMP and VIR, and personally broke the production car lap record at CMP last year in this car.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a44674723/porsche-ev-charging-lounge-germany/ Maybe I'm reading too far between the lines here but I feel like we're losing the plot. Granted, I am not a big EV fan because they're boring, but I see the appeal for zipping around the city. However, I feel like EVs are starting to get branded as the "responsible" replacement for ICEs so that you can keep driving everywhere but feel less guilty about it. An electric car is still a car, and encompasses most of the things about a car-based lifestyle...obviously, cars do have their place and there need to be convenient recharging stations. But there needs to be a balance; I think luxury EV charging destinations is starting to toe that line and will probably actually end up continuing to push a car-based lifestyle, which will negatively impact efforts to make cities more walkable as it will feel easier to rationalize driving when you're not burning gas everywhere.

Think I read somewhere that this has increased to 34 stories.

Whatever floats your boat...there are the at-grade crossings in Glenwood South. Obviously, there aren't sidewalks over the tracks which I would imagine is more a product of rail companies being so difficult to work with than a lack of desire to have true sidewalks across the tracks. However, the pavement extends pretty far off to each side of the road to bridge the gaps from the actual sidewalks. It's not as bad as you make it seem, you're not tripping over the tracks or anything. I will grant that Peace St should have been road-dieted during the Capitol Blvd construction but the trees and extremely wide (14ft) sidewalks are as good as anyone could have realistically hoped for with a DOT-involved project. Plus there will eventually be a park on the north side of Peace between Capitol and West. The next bridge (underneath the train tracks) will likely continue to be uninviting for pedestrians for the same reason as the at-grade crossings.

I've walked all of those streets many many times...Capitol Blvd I somewhat agree with, but Peace St feels less suburban than the entire stretch of Caldwell St in Uptown, and the train tracks feel less intrusive than many of the Blue Line crossings here.

Isn't there federal money involved that mandates construction deadlines? I had been under the impression that construction was immanent due to the federal funding.

I know. Otherwise comments towards Charlotte users such as @kermit might actually have a grain of truth to them.

Has any Raleigh user ever actually read a single post in the Charlotte forum or do yall just echo what you think Charlotte people post about?

Word on the street says this has been reduced again, now down to 29 stories.

Welcome to the 'Intergalactic', a Beastie Boys hotel. Be sure to check out our other brands like the 'Brass Monkey Inn' and 'Now That We Are In Brooklyn We Can Finally Get Some Sleep Resort.'

For better or worse, I think that the sheer number of murders is more impactful than actual murder rates in the minds of many, due to the relative frequency of each murder. Look at the population figures of the top 10 on that list. Robeson County has 116k residents. Vance has 42k. Scotland has 34k. Columbus has 50k. Swain has 14k. Anson has 22k. Hyde has 4.5k. Green has 20k. Bladen has 29k. Hoke has 54k. Robeson County is somewhat of an anomaly but its struggles are no doubt fueled by being the first NC county on I-95 which is a notorious drug route, and rampant poverty (Wikipedia says about 28% of the county population lives below the poverty line). The rest of the counties have pretty small populations, so a couple of murders will drastically alter their numbers when measured per 100k residents. CMPD reports there were 24 homicides during Q1 of this year (up from 19 in Q1 of '22). In other words, about 2 murders a week. Over in Hyde County, if I did my math properly (since I couldn't find actual numbers) I believe there was only 1 homicide all of last year, but its population is so small that it appears much greater at first glance. Obviously, no one wants to live in a dangerous environment but if they hear of just 1 homicide all year living in the country vs 2 each week living in Charlotte, the country will feel safer even if technically isn't.

But how exactly are there downsides to winning grants, especially when they are largely federally-funded? I don't see any since the city then contributes only a small portion of the money to these projects. Plus there don't really seem to be many potential major suburban projects that are remotely feasible anymore (aside from some planned by NCDOT), as most major thoroughfares have long since been connected/widened, and I feel like even residents who complain about traffic would be somewhat hesitant to support widening the road outside their subdivision to 6+ lanes. The only way to make widespread impacts throughout the city...is for city leaders to give a sh!t. I feel like the past few years in particular, no one within the city council has really had any sort of vision for the city, or really done anything except virtue signal. We hear all of them (well most of them anyway) cry about housing affordability, traffic, police brutality, gentrification, climate change, inequality, whatever else, etc...and then nothing ever changes. I am in my 20s so I obviously can't remember this personally, but when you start going back through the decades, it seemed like large-scale things were actually getting done with regularity. Of course, many mistakes were made...Independence Blvd, I-77 and I-277, etc. But Charlotte also landed NBA and NFL teams within a decade. Firmly solidified itself as a national banking hub. Scooped the US National Whitewater Center. Built a light rail. And then, it felt like the people who cared and had the ability to get things done and push Charlotte into the next echelon, moved on, and were replaced with people intent on finding the Autopilot button because things were "good enough". Now look at our disaster of a transit system, spiraling housing market, traffic congestion, etc. It feels like we are failing at so many basic things, yet because we were set up so well by previous generations of leadership, people continue flocking here and further overwhelming the things we were already beginning to struggle with. Why are we only getting a nominal investment when we're 250 miles behind on building sidewalks? I'd like to see what was even submitted because there are a LOT of historically under-served areas of the city that I'm sure would have been attractive candidates for additional grant funding.

I feel like that's been a consistent trend for a while now...a general malaise and lack of ambition from the City of Charlotte. Wasn't there a report not too long ago saying that we're missing like 250 miles worth of sidewalks throughout the city? It feels almost incomprehensible to be so far behind in that regard, and only land 3.5 miles worth through grants. Although to be fair the Sugar Creek project will be a significant upgrade for that corridor (even though the multi-use path ends at Tryon St instead of continuing to the Blue Line , hopefully that last segment will be connected before too long due to all the planned redevelopment). I seriously wonder if long-completed projects, such as the East Blvd road diet, would even be considered by current leadership if they hadn't been done previously. I'm struggling to think of a recent notable infrastructure project other than greenways, and we're still somehow seemingly a long ways off from finally seeing a Rail Trail bridge over 277.