Robbie Charlotte

If someone proposed to come along and create 15-20 of these low-rise street-fronting facades all in this district so that we ended up with something like 6th street in Austin, I'd be all for it.

Are you saying that because the general trend will lead to taller, or do you have details on a specific project that will be announced? As for the new taller outside of the 277 loop - well that could be the Spandrel/Atalaya residential project on Morehead, no?

hmm, pedestrian plaza or new patrons for business are intangible? I get your point about the bounded rationality of each council member. I'm just saying that if we're pushing back on projects like this along mass transit infrastructure, then please stop proposing tax hikes and wasting my money on mass transit.

I'm thrilled to see that hideous chain-link fence come down and this lot revitalized. Charlotte is so fortunate as a sunbelt city to see so much vitality so close to its urban core.

Wholeheartedly agree. Observer writes that council members agreed that project failed to include community benefits. Let's review: intensified residential use adjacent to a new transit line - no benefit? significant increase in new patrons for local-area, center city businesses - no benefit? in-town development so that we're not felling a forest on the edge of town to accommodate new residents - no benefit? pedestrian plaza included in project - no benefit? So to get this straight, only affordable housing is a community benefit?

Is this place accessible via mass transit? Been in Charlotte two years, but never to Music Factory. Assuming this is outside of Uptown, yes?

wow, beating out places like Atlanta, Seattle, Austin and Miami in absolute terms on office space construction? Would never have guessed that.

I know times are tough for malls, but it would be nice to see Charlotte with more of an outdoor mall, something akin to OxfordStreet in London. We've got decent, temperate weather. I think it would work. If they can attempt to replicate a shopping strip in Beverly Hills with Jacksonville's St. Johns Town Center, I believe we can do better than the assortment of enclosed centers we have.

That's a good step. Can we also get J Cole to tell people not to trash the homestead? Gonna need a cross-section of musical styles for this campaign.

Impressive. Also, interesting to contemplate what this innovation district may mean for urban infill growth? Will we see fairly rapid infill growth in parking lots along Stonewall and should this project accelerate the timeline for redeveloping Brooklyn, or is "277" too great a barrier?

When a NYC-based financial services firm (buy-side or sell-side) starts scouting cities for a tech innovation hub to drive the "digital transformation and strategy" of the enterprise, does Charlotte have enough branding in this area to be considered a locational stalwart for such expansions? Not going to lie, I've been on calls with Asset Managers considering the sunbelt, and when they get around to NC, they know Raleigh well and have preconceptions that it is rich with talent thanks to Duke/UNC CH. Charlotte is a bit more unclear, and to them is more full of the traditional white-collar consumer and business bankers along with their risk management/operational counterparts. I should add that these digital transformation roles are not just tech, but high tech. Unclear to me whether Charlotte has even established itself as a High Tech hub in banking.

And while Robinhood is looking for space in Charlotte for back-office operations, Citadel might as well look here too. A growing share of large hedge funds are considering sunbelt locations for infrastructure teams, especially tech innovation groups. Most hedge funds are too small to put up newsworthy headcounts for such sunbelt-based operations, but a firm like Citadel could register a decent-sized headcount for something like this. Miami appears to be "cleaning up" in the area of sunbelt-based hedge fund expansions (and not just back-office either). I'd submit that when a hedge fund's sunbelt expansion is for uber-wealthy founding partners, Miami has the advantage. When it's to grow infrastructure, operational capacity, or to launch a tech innovation team, I think a city like Charlotte is competitive - although Raleigh might have an edge there.

I've been inside of it, and the only "vestiges" I've observed are old age and decrepitude. Is that the trade-off, suppress any sort of aesthetic sensibility or live in a food desert?

I thought he was simply referring to adding other uses to that property, given it currently is a sprawling sea of blacktop for parking and the lot hardly has any sidewalks on its perimeter for pedestrian access. I've been to that area multiple times and thought the property seemed prime for "densification." In addition, a development project that modernizes and strengthens the current structures isn't necessarily incompatible with keeping that grocer or any kind of grocer.

I actually emailed the company about green-screens on parking garages and they said they do this, but no concepts currently in Charlotte. Any way the city can incentivize this to get done...and it's a local company...

Are you still confident about 10 Tryon?

This might be a silly comment, but I stopped by the new public library on South Boulevard on Saturday. At the site is a one-story, single-use structure with a parking lot. I thought to myself, given the urgent need for housing, couldn't this have been a multi-story building with affordable apartments up top and a ground floor library and coffee shop?

Not going to lie, I love the building Arrival is moving into. I despise the look of 2100 S Tryon. Please, someone teach me what to appreciate about it. Not sure which thread this belongs in, but I just came across a Memphis thread for a billion-dollar downtown project there called "The Walk on Union," and wondered why nothing like it has been proposed for Uptown. I mean, it's Memphis.

Where does one find this latest map?

Do you believe their West Trade project to be of higher quality than Uptown 550?

I just put a place under contract in the Wesley Heights area. If all goes as planned, I'll be moving there from South End (right next to Atherton Mill) early next month. I certainly hope this area continues to evolve. I will miss sauntering to an adjacent wine bar or to a pub to watch a game in the way that I access those things in South End. The new place in Wesley Heights is still largely residential with few entertainment spots to just walk to. These adaptive reuse projects currently abounding in the area are certainly intriguing and creative, but I hope they go a little easy on making the asphalt seas of parking such prominent features in these developments.

Would it be fair to think of this initiative as building academic prestige and renown from scratch? No history to point to, no track record, no discoveries, no patents, no famous benefactors... are we generations from realizing a bit of the touted promise of this transaction?

I've assumed the medical school site will be in Midtown. Is that far from a given? Any chance this might end up in the suburbs, or will this be in center city?

Might be off-base here, but I bristle at the idea of using Atlanta, Houston, or even Dallas as models for what uptown Charlotte should aspire to

White Point seeking to rezone to TOD-UC, the densest of the TOD zones adopted by Council last year. It is a conventional rezoning request, so plans for the rezoning don't have to be submitted. That's really the pith of the article.