Exile

I only had time to scan the articles on it. I agree with all that this is impressive, but a question: is this the first phase of a larger 160 acre park, or has the whole thing been scaled down to 60, or was it always going to be 60?

Rome doesn't have much height either; or, more comparable in size to Greenville, Florence (Firenze) has no height at all (except the domes and campaniles). All to say that I really like the more European manner of downtown's development. This seems to continue that, more or less.

There doesn't appear to be any contour to the land--the whole thing is rendered as if it's built on level ground. I remember some steep spots in that parking lot around the tire store on the corner--and wasn't there a Hess station there at one time? I think it would be pretty cool if they graded that land at the intersection of Church and U. Ridge so that the bases of buildings there were higher than the intersection--unlike the way they've graded down for that new business school at Clemson

What exactly are those people walking around on the roof going to be able to see?? Even with the apparent pitch, it's seems like an odd perspective. Having said that, I like the look of the building. It reminds me of a couple of buildings here in uptown CLT occupied by Johnson & Wales, with a canopy covering the open space in between--only this is much nicer.

Latest Hartness announcement shouldn't be totally overshadowed by County Square: it will include an inn adjacent to the original home capable of handling "up to 300 guests."

Yes. Suppose Dillards second store had been 10 or 15 miles away from Haywood Mall instead of a little over a mile away. A lot less likely they would have closed it, and IMO that was the biggest of several death blows to Greenville Mall. Here in Concord there's modest little Carolina Mall that keeps chugging along because there's nothing like it anywhere nearby (Concord Mills is a different animal, and is over 8 miles away). By every measure, GM was ridiculously superior to this mall, except for its proximity to HM. To bring it back to this thread, distance from DT and location in fast-growing Mauldin in my amateur opinion gives Bridgeway Station a much higher probability of success. I wonder, too, if a successful development might spur other means of relieving Woodruff Road of that dreadful traffic problem. One can only hope.

I think you're right about supply and demand, and you might be right about the potential busts. But I don't think Greenville's mall history is a good example of that. Greenville's unusual because all 4 malls were so close to each other. If one had been built, e.g., somewhere in Powdersville and another in Simpsonville, we might still have as many as three operating malls. But malls seem to be out of style, at least in the South, and that's another thread....

I'm with distortedlogic on having nodes of development--mini-downtowns and "Mayberrys" around the urban area, all more or less interlocking. I think it makes an urban splotch much more interesting. I know very little about the technicalities of urban planning, but the whole notion of "planning" seems to me to have the potential to run roughshod over the good sense of the people who actually have a tangible stake in development, i.e., the landowners and developers. Not dissing planning; just noting a need for balance. There are always going to be developments that don't appeal to one or more of us individually. For example, it never made sense to me to try to convert that Celanese plant into office or flex or whatever it was they were trying to do with it. The market eventually ruled, the plant building is gone, and it's developing slowly but nicely, and gives Greenville a nice presence along I-85. Other developments I thought were ill-conceived were big successes. Et cetera. But I've got no skin in that game. Phil Hughes does. He'll develop that property according to his best judgment and the market will render its verdict. But when I said he's owned it for a long time, I mean somewhere in excess of 20 years ( I made inquiries about it back in the '90's). Possibly much longer, especially if perhaps his father owned it before him. I don't know. Clearly he thinks its prime time to do something with it. But I will say that it seems we're overdue for a downturn, and there are those who say that we're already on the edge of a bear market. So while I'm sure Hughes has done his homework, there's still a lot of risk involved, especially if there's a relatively quick buildout of the whole concept. We'll see.

Hughes Investments has owned that land for a long time. I gotta think this is a well-thought-out development with a high probability of success. And they've obviously made major contributions to downtown development, so from that perspective there's balance in this development. Some people (a lot of them) just don't want to work downtown; even if the transit and parking options were plentiful and cheap.

Grill Marks was listed as one of the "31 best burger joints in America," by Thrillist. Good to see a great restaurant getting some recognition.

I was counting rooms added since the Hyatt, and just in the DT area, i.e., rooms that could conceivably be attached to or a short walk from a convention facility. The Comfort Inn building's too far, and significantly predates the Hyatt. And as for buildings with some proximity to DT, the Brio used to be....something, I can't remember, but it was a hotel, and a pretty good one, at least for a while. It was a respectable venue for wedding receptions, that sort of thing. And incidentally, undoubtedly some in this forum are old enough to remember "The Wicked Witch," a basement bar that you entered through a now-blocked-off stairway at the Waterstone end of the Comfort Inn building (which I think was originally a HoJo). The SH/Res is larger than initially advertised; but I overestimated Home2. All the others look about the same as what I found. But I defer to y'all on room counts. I haven't lived in Greenville for a long time now.

No, not entirely sure. I included Home2, Aloft, Residence/Spring Hill, Hyatt Place, Poinsett, Courtyard, AC, Hampton, Embassy, Main & Markley, and Bohemian. But, as I said, I couldn't get definite room counts on two of them, so I just used an average # of 150 for each. I suspect Main & Markley at least will be bigger.

Somebody needs to come up with a designation other than "Interstate" for a road that won't get within 30 miles of a neighboring state. "Freeway" seems to have gone out of usage, but if there aren't any tolls, it's near-perfectly descriptive.

Wow. Accounting losses with positive cash flow maybe? Strength of friendship has its limits, especially when you're talking business losses. And there was a UDAG involved. Is that the federal money you're talking about? All this is hazy memory for me.

UP needs some cricket emoticons. With sound?

Surely Hyatt had/has no ownership in the real estate. Presumably Greenville was taking all the losses. I suppose it was Heller's influence that kept the Hyatt brand on the building. I did a little informal ciphering, and I've come up with 1485 rooms** that are in existence or under construction downtown from 350 N Main to Main & Markley, and from Church to Academy, not including the Hyatt or the Poinsett. With the Poinsett, that's the same number of rooms as are in the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta. Not bad at all. I just find it interesting that, given the city's obvious interest in convention business downtown, hotel development has been so scattered and small (relative to the Hyatt). I know they've got the Palmetto Expo albatross and a study that says "if you build it, they won't come." And of course there are limits to shepherding of developers. Still, all those hotel rooms and there's no way to capitalize on them for maybe a bigger slice of the convention business because they're so scattered. Seems a shame. **I couldn't find definite numbers on Main & Markley or on 350 N. Main, so I just used 150 for each. If my info is up to date, Res. Inn/Spring Hill is the biggest at 240 rooms; Poinsett is 200; all the rest are from 115 to 160.

The problem with the crosswalk--a great idea in theory--is that it's hemmed in by a courthouse and a historic church+cemetery. Not sure how you'd make that work, since--I would think--there'd have to be sizable approaches to something high enough for truck traffic. Now if the county included a new courthouse in their redevelopment of County Square, the existing courthouse could perhaps be repurposed and associated with something on the gateway site, or demolished and replaced. I don't recall ever having been inside the County Courthouse building, so I don't know whether it has any historic value that's worth preserving. But I've often wondered whether there'd be a way to use the land in between the Hyatt and the Gateway site to create a larger convention capacity: like the way the Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton in Atlanta co-host large events; just Greenville scale. I was recently at a meeting at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, which has a ~20 story Sheraton attached to it. I don't know what its capacity is, but it's in the multiple thousands. It's essentially in a mall parking lot and the Coliseum is not far away, I gather. If Greensboro can do it, surely Greenville can--and what I've outlined above would distribute the risk of the "facility," since there wouldn't have to be one as such. But distortedlogic is probably right--in terms of hotel construction, we've probably passed the point of feasibility for that kind of thing for the time being. It is interesting to me that we somehow managed to build a 330 room Hyatt almost 40 years ago, when downtown was in an iron lung; and in the time since nobody's built anything even close to that size.

Which makes me wonder whether this may end up going the way of Magnolia Park, i.e., for a while, all we get is a demolished mall, except for a county office building, and an eventual development that underwhelms in light of what was originally proposed--though I suppose we haven't actually seen any proposals, just perhaps unrealistic numbers.

There are boulders all over southern Cabarrus County, particularly loose boulders, including in my yard, with no apparent source. When you're headed south on I-85 towards Bruton Smith, there are huge boulders on top of the hill to the left just before you get to that exit. Even if the other side of the hill isn't as steep or as high, still, they're way too big to have been moved by anything artificial, and I don't see how they could have formed the way they have by erosion. That's why I've always subscribed to the impact theory, which, to my mind, the plethora of boulders seems to lend some credence to. The way it was told to me, the impact site was basically Harrisburg. But, like Nakers2, I haven't found any info about it. Whatever the case--and I'm no scientist, much less a geologist--there are a lot of fascinating geological features around Charlotte.

Aaaah. Perspective. They talked about that on our tour in Florence. I forgot that it applies to photographs, too.

Random CLT question: from Google earth 10/8/2016 imagery. What? I know little about airport ops, but I gotta figure that's nonstandard.

Yeah--having a hub was almost run-of-the-mill for cities of a certain size back in that day. I used to fly NWA through MEM to various European destinations. But think of all the de-hubbed airports: RDU, BNA, STL, MEM, CVG, PIT. Those are the ones that come to me immediately. After all that airport carnage, CLT's AA fortress is something remarkable.

Wikipedia says that Bon Secours Wellness Arena seats 17,000 for basketball. It was originally just short of 15,000. Is that larger number correct? If so, how did they squeeze in the extra seats? (P.S. If this thread ever gets any traction again, it needs to be renamed)

I vote that this replace the airplane shot of downtown on the Greenville Wikipedia page under "Geography." Not that I have a vote.

Has this pic now become post-apocalyptic fiction? Seriously, though, I have to wonder how much traffic GSP bleeds to CLT. It's just flat-out easy to get up here if you live in Spartanburg, much less further northeast, and there's a good chance you're going to go to CLT, anyway. Whatever the case, driving to CLT eliminates ATL from the equation, which is always a plus, even with CLT's current deficiencies. GSP may have fallen into the same kind of trap that CAE seemed to be in when Southwest initiated service at two ends of SC, but not in the middle. Sandwiched between two fortress hubs and with a genuine tourist area nearby already served by an airport (AVL). PTI--um... Central NC Int'l Airport--isn't in that situation, nor is TYS (Knoxville) or BHM. It seems to me that Greenville is, route-wise, caught in a bit of a catch 22: Greenville's attractions are steady but non-explosive growth, culture, walkable downtown, etc., but, given the proximity of CLT and ATL, the route diversity we want probably has as a prerequisite something closer to explosive growth that would impair or negate Greenville's attractions.