DH17

You all have much sharper eyes than me - good catch and you are most likely correct.

Glad to see this is officially moving along! Heard it was on track but this may be our first post-covid big development. Truist will occupy both towers in the rendering. In between, the smaller building will be a hotel of some sort, but that seems less definite given the struggles in the industry.

Uptown was about the busiest today I've seen in months, especially for a Sunday. Good to see from an economic perspective, and there was decent mask usage which was encouraging on the health side.

Now if they can just re-open the underpass under I-77 and I can get back to my old route!

Overseen at an undisclosed, heavily guarded safe-house in Uptown: the James K Polk building sign has new life and will live out the rest of its days in the peace and tranquility of protective custody. We can all take solace that it is now far away from the destruction and chaotic hot-zone from which it barely escaped with its life.

Was on a run the other day on Stonewall St. Uptown and a foreign couple (heavy accent) asked me where "the bars and restaurants are on the waterfront". I directed them towards Upper South End after explaining we don't have a waterfront here. Wonder if they mixed us up with Charleston???

My friend messaged Zablong - sounds like they closed permanently in Latta Arcade.

We have to be patient, but I think this may be the first post-COVID development Uptown. May also need to.....double our expectations as well.

Heard some details on the plans for the Library block and let's just say I am very impressed. Probably won't be anything public for a long while and who knows what impact Corona will have on it, but I am very optimistic for now.

I wonder what impacts the Coronavirus will have on the 2020 Census. Any thoughts?

For my own sake I better keep my mouth shut

Oh I agree, entirely not contagious. I was wondering if there could be anything environmental somewhere, but I know it's more or less a solitary ticking time-bomb that usually never goes off. Weird.

Didn't realize that this development had different zoning. TOD does have height restrictions, so I suppose it will have more of a "natural" change in height overall.

This is a little unusual for this thread and purely anecdotal, but something weird is happening with Appendicitis in South End. 2.5 years ago my girlfriend-at-the-time's roommate had Appendicitis. 3 months later, so did my girlfriend Just this morning, my current girlfriend called me and is at urgent care with her roommate, who now has all of the symptoms of acute Appendicitis. 3 young women, all between the ages of 22-25, all living between New Bern and East/West stations on the light rail. The first two I completely chalked up to coincidence, but at this point I half expect a trip with my current girlfriend to the ER in the next 6 months. Weird.

I was walking with my sister today (she is in local government in this region so has interesting takes) and she lamented the coming high-rises right next to one-story buildings. How does this board view that? I for one think it can work, but she also has a point that South End as we know it will be no more very soon.

Is it just me, or is this entire extension a chronically mismanaged project?

I will say I was on the decline bandwagon, and pulled some to safer havens. I may eat my shirt over it, but good lesson learned about patience.

Hope the police ID him and arrest him. I support the message of the protests, but it seems to be getting hijacked by rabble-rousers across the country. Doesn't change my view on the major problems we have (police nation-wide and the criminal justice system badly need reform), just that the violence needs to stop as well.

I'd almost prefer commuter rail from Gastonia to the Airport, and then a transfer to light rail from the Airport to Uptown. Keeps us from having to run short headway trains all the way out to Gastonia while still having the rail connection. Transfers aren't uncommon in other metros.

I believe AIG is the same. Expanding presence down here slowly, but many reasons to keep the "official" HQ elsewhere.

I really like the concept of these maps, but wow, they really got Forsyth and Guilford counties wrong. Looks like they are off by a decimal in the raw data (36K vs 360K and 50K vs 500K). They made the Triad disappear!

I realize these aren't "new" restaurants, but I went on a run after the storms this afternoon and wanted to highlight which restaurants have re-opened and which are still takeout-only/temporarily closed. Results may vary - these were my observations as I ran by this evening. Not too many people out, which is to be expected. The weather didn't help either. Still, definitely the busiest foot traffic I've seen in a little while. Open for sit-down Midnight Diner (they danced and waved for me to come in as I ran by) Hot Taco Cedar St. Tavern Great Wok Bisonte Pizza Co Futo Buta Chima Steakhouse Chipotle Eddie V's The Local 204 North Cowbell Burger Bar Bulgogi Box Still Carry-out Only Charlotte Beer Garden Basil Thai Still closed/Uncertain (for now, I hope) Essex 5Church Sitthara (caters the contractors at Gateway for lunch anyways)

I really agree with this post. Maybe I'm overly optimistic but I honestly think that economic gravity will be very tough to overcome (in our favor). For a place that was probably considered a "backwater" to the world a mere ~20 years ago, we have come a long way. I absolutely support more regional integration, but give us a couple of more decades of similar growth and our own natural economic gravity will snowball and attract even more investment and development. The rich will get richer, and luckily we are on a very positive trajectory vs. the North, where so much wealth currently resides. I picture NC's potential as that of a modern day Ruhr region in Germany or Silicon Valley. Few outside geography nerds or businessmen know the all of the individual cities of the region, but both are economic power-houses known around the world. We don't need to aspire to be Atlanta or New York, instead we can be our own integrated region in the New South, with each part of the new state-wide triangle having its own locus that works together in concert: Charlotte - HQs, Finance, Tech Triad - Hi-tech, skilled manufacturing, Logistics Triangle - Education, Research, Bio-medical, Tech Sure, Charlotte is currently attracting more of the middle to low ends of the economic spectrum, but with enough critical mass we will attract the high-end as well. Very excited about what the coming decades will bring.

I have taken up biking in the past couple of months with the virus shut-downs, and I couldn't agree more with this. I have been using some of those unprotected bike "lanes" but agree that I don't feel super safe on them compared to what you are proposing. I have biked in Amsterdam and other cities that take it seriously, and hope that one day we can get a stronger commitment to separate cars from bikes. The new lane on 6th is definitely a good first step towards that.

My argument in favor of the stay-at-home that was implemented is on a couple of fronts: 1. At the time stay-at-home orders were implemented, no one knew if NYC was the canary in the coal mine or an outlier. 2. This got everyone's attention in order to ACTUALLY change behavior. Sure, some of this will go away once the current order is lifted, but a lot of people were treating this as BAU right up until the first things were shut down (see: South End on the weekend prior to St. Patrick's Day) 3. Our testing, supply chain, and medical treatments for the virus are all improved to varying degrees since Mid-March. Sure, all need improvements, but medical protocol has been improved (less intubation, treatment for blood coagulation, etc.), testing hit 12K yesterday, and we have a month's worth of N95's for our healthcare workers. Now I'd say that the broader actions that needed to occur needed broad federal support and action to make happen in our country. The Federal government doesn't have a constitutional mandate to have a balanced budgets like most states do. Now, we have both an economic crisis as well as a health crisis. However, even if we didn't have a stay-at-home, we would still have both. Hopefully now the health crisis is less severe than it would have been with no action. I truly believe that to be the case.