NYtoCLT

I actually don't hate All Carolina FC because I think ACFC would be a great nickname. Closest there is to QCFC which is what I was hoping for before the list came out. I think Charlotte Town is the favorite though.

Charlotte MLS also sent an email this morning crossing Charlotte Fortune FC off the list of name candidates. I guess they are going to send (daily?) updates crossing off names until there is 1 winner.

I think Lowes would be a natural fit given location and rivalry with Blank's Home Depot.

I was originally skeptical of 100MM people in US not having a driver's license, but I guess if you count everyone under 16-17 it's not totally unbelievable. That does make the stat misleading though, when I was 12, I wasn't driving myself, but was still doing a large amount of travel by car (with my mom driving me). Not saying the foundational point isn't correct, but it makes it seem like a larger percentage of the population is not reliant on cars.

I feel like some amount of people have gotten used to going to Central or Pecan. I'm curious how busy Hawthorne will be once it opens, especially if traffic is slowed by being behind a trolley. That said, I just want my bridge open.

Does anyone have the old renderings of the project that died?

It's about twice the distance of Downtown Atlanta to Buckhead.

Here's hoping not very. Taking any material amount of office space away from the urban core will be bad for the city in the long term. Having one center-city is one of the best things Charlotte has going for it. Having a multi-modal approach would be recreating a lot of the mistakes Atlanta made in its development.

Honestly the number would be WAY higher than 69% if the greenways were more robust/connected. If they were connected enough to provide a viable way for people to bike/scoot to work (if/when people commute to work again) without being next to cars, usage would skyrocket.

Does anyone know when the tree is supposed to be planted?

Larken met with a bunch of Elizabeth residents yesterday and one of the things he mentioned was that the earliest the bridge could be open for cars would be late August, but that he is pushing to open part of it to pedestrians/bikes in advance to the extent possible while the roadwork is being finished/tested for cars.

Does anyone know if they are going to have the traffic lights timed for the streetcar to minimize the amount of time the streetcar spends in traffic?

No, but there are consistently people working on it when I've walked by so at least there is some progress. At this point moving the ball forward, even if very slowly, is a huge accomplishment here.

I have a feeling that there are some quasi-permanent residents there, so it would be politically infeasible, but I kind of wish the Budget Inn was razed so the nature preserve could be expanded especially since it basically directly abuts the creek.

Backyard on the other side is basically a wildlife sanctuary though. May not totally offset being next to a highway, but definitely helps.

Yes, it is tearing down one of the last historic buildings in Uptown. But it is also doing it for a LESS DENSE use. This isn't a historic single story building being turned into a multi-family building. It is a damn tower. You could basically cut the floors in half and Hall House would still be more dense. This proposal is insanity.

Did everyone else realize that Inlivian's offices are on East Blvd is Dilworth? If they are really concerned with putting affordable housing in neighborhoods that need it, they would do a land swap with this parcel and move their offices to a less expensive neighborhood. I am sure they could find suitable office space in North Tryon.

Great, hopefully if there is enough outrage, they'll reconsider. It might be worth seeing if anyone can look into how other places have addressed the low floor to floor ratio for other projects in other cities since that seems to be one of the arguments they are going to make.

It looks like Inlivian has an independent board -- Lucy Brown, Shirley Fulton, Sheila Jones, Leigh Ann Smith, Ray McKinnon, Linda Ashendorf and Michael W. Kennerly. http://inlivian.com/about/#team It doesn't list emails, but if anyone has their contact info, I would recommend reaching out to them,

I actually did email county commissioners and got an almost immediate phone call from Pat Cotham (not her office, her personally, great constituent service). A couple of notes: County Commission is not the right organization to direct ire. Invlivian is not overseen by the county. Unclear if overseen by City instead or quasi-governmental so not directly accountable to any elected officials, but the City apparently has a more direct relationship than the county. Apparently Inlivian had been working with the county/city/library/BOA as part of the cohesive North Tryon vision, but pulled out recently so this is not part of the cohesive plan. As for Hall House itself, the justification is that the floor sizes are too small/ceiling heights too low, so a remodel isn't very likely. That said, they could double the floor sizes and it would be bigger than a 6 floor apartment. Tl/DR - Floor height is the issue, but if you still want to see it saved email City Council and Alma Adams (Federal so she can bother HUD), County is not the correct organization.

With Covid, malls seem like places that will be hit especially hard (and were already on the decline). All retail will likely continue to struggle for a bit but I could see open air shopping districts being far more appealing than a closed in mall environment. Counter-intuitively, in the long run, this could help expand retail in center city.

Does anyone know if there is any chance the city gets rid of "Charlotte's got a lot!". It is such an awful slogal/website. I was reading Garden and Gun and almost every southern city advertises for its tourism. Charlotte's ad was fine compared to all of the others, but the website/slogan is so embarrassing.

At this point, I'm not sure I can imagine a more beautiful sight.

I agree with everything you said. That said, it is good to see a list which is focusing on improvement (which I think is what this is -- the methodology wasn't super clear in the article) and it is good to see CLT on that list. Most of the walkability lists/rankings just focus on overall walkability rankings -- which CLT will likely never on. These types are rankings/lists are vastly more useful than those overall walkability rankings. For one, the usual rankings tell you things you already know -- NYC, DC and Chicago are walkable while CLT, ATL and all of the southern cities are not. No city that came of age post-automobile will ever compete with pre-automobile cities in terms of walkability. But more importantly, it doesn't reward cities when progress is made. NYC has always been America's most walkable/pedestrian friendly city. But it had INCREDIBLE progress under Bloomberg/Sadik-Khan which should be celebrated. If CLT truly made a commitment to walkability it could improve dramatically (which I hope it does!) but it will never be NYC, DC or Chicago. Having a ranking like this reward it for improvement could help keep inertia in the right direction. I think you are right and this looked at whether there are programs, not whether those programs are actually used or effective so the ranking is clearly very flawed. But it is nice to see a study that doesn't just regurgitate out the same 5-10 classically walkable cities and instead is trying to focus on improvement. Who knows, maybe some policy makers in CLT will see this and remember "oh yea, I forgot we had a Vision Zero and Charlotte Walks Plan, maybe we should actually do something with that."

I noticed the little building near the corner on Stonewall (to the left of the tree) when I drove by last week. What is it supposed to be used for? It didnt look like the Stonewall side had plans for a door or windows.