charlotte49ersuptown

I ran the length of the Little Sugar Creek Greenway this morning starting at Charlottetowne and both bridge underpasses are completed. The connection under Morehead is actually suspended over the creek as opposed to being built atop fill dirt. It's still a concrete sidewalk, however with water still flowing under it hopefully it won't flood as much unless their is a torrential downpour. All in all, very pleased with being able to walk from Brandywine all the way to Metropolitan without crossing a major street at-grade.

I know this is not the place for this, but since you mentioned the newsracks there will be a combination of public art and event sponsorship banners installed on the back of the racks, similar to the pole banner or overstreet banners.

This map depicts improvements that are pretty unrealistic. The 2050 SEHR path from Raleigh straight to Charlotte is almost impossible. The reason why there is not a direct connection via road or rail today is because of the Uwharrie National Forest. The elevation change in this area would prevent this type of connection to be made. It makes me wonder who is putting togehter these maps if there is little chance of the project ever occuring.

The landscaping you see there was actually done by Historic South End and CCCP. Much of the landscaping improvements along Camden are courtesy of Historic South End, especially at the corners.

CATS will be building a third track in Uptown or near Uptown on the North End to accomodate this "stacking" procedure. The rail will be long enough to support 3 - 4 double car sets and also be used if a car breaks down on the northern part of the line and needs to be towed to an interim location before being towed all the way to the VMF. Look for the track somewhere between 10th & 12th.

CATS May ridership figures were released today. LYNX average weekday ridership is at 16,239 and Saturday is at 14,176. Overall system ridership is up 16.1% from this time last year (does not include LYNX). Here are the last few months ridership for LYNX (avg weekday ridership) Jan: 11,930 (Sat = 8,157) Feb: 14,246 Mar: 14,807 Apr: 12,689 May: 16,239 (Sat = 14,176) WOW

Yes, I hope we do have better weather the rest of the study. We will be out Thursday & Saturday of this week and then be out the week of April 15th on Tues, Thurs, and Saturday along North and South Tryon. The count went great yesterday, especially in the afternoon. We will have an abbreviated version of our findings complete in May with a full report in the summer for anyone who is interested. This is the first time we are doing this type of study so wish us luck.

Those pictures really show the southern expansion of our skyline, when North Tryon gets going the hospital is going to afford some even greater views.

A quick note, 940 Brevard has been topped out for quite a few weeks and windows starting going in a few days ago. Between this project and Alpha Mill I hope the redevelopment of the parcel closest to 12th street could include retail. These two projects are so disconnected from everything else, a small c-store and dry cleaners might do fairly well as part of another residential project.

the webcam is up for Catalyst: http://oxblue.com/pro/open/?webPath=novare/catalyst They have put the link on the catalyst homepage which has been updated.

I guess this means that Morehead Common is off the books and the site is once again in limbo. I think this is a good sign, this site needs a better mix of uses and a little more density than what was planned.

I stayed at TWELVE Atlantic Station not too long ago and they had the same ceiling finishes as Avenue. In fact, there was still some chalk on the ceiling and you could see where all the plywood was laid. This is a standard for Novare, as said before, and I think they will continue to do it. It doesn't look bad, as long as you don't have those crevices that we have seen from photos of Avenue.

Your right, it seems that the new crane has been positioned on the top of the parking deck closer to the LRT side of the building. It also looks like there is only one long piece to the crane, of course being on top of the building it doesn't have to be that tall. This has to be a crane for the office tower, although I am not sure what the crane on the 5th Street side was meant for.

Just walked by the site, I am hoping the AT&T ad is just temporary because I would hate for this corner to have a static image. A jumbotron that scrolled ad's and events for Uptown would be much better and add that Times Square theme they are looking for. They are also pouring the sidewalk along Trade Street today.