Windsurfer

Pretty cool that folks are moving here from Portland of all places. I still think there's a huge opportunity for someone to open a brewery or restaurant capitalizing on the gold mining history. Open up an old shaft entrance and put a glass floor over it or something and market "Charlotte Gold", or "The Placer Pit", or something.

Great shot! Thanks. I'm guessing WBTV's studios would've been in both too.

We're already on it out here on Statesville Ave! Add some of that coal ash and it's done!

This is such an interesting comment to me. Years ago, I used to conduct some regattas for windsurfing. I inherited a mess from the prior regatta chairman. The guy before me had rules after rules. If someone rounded a mark on the wrong side of a sailor he/she had to penalize themself. All kinds of points and penalties. I got so overwhelmed. Out of frustration, I just tried a single race with NO holds barred. No rules. No penalites. Heck, if you wanted you could knock the other windsurfer off their board and keep going. Believe it or not, that one race changed all my subsequent races to NO RULES, except of course you had to rounds certain markers. Things became civil. Nobody knocked over anyone else. Nobody challenged another. And, we all would have the best beer parties afterward. Human beings are funny creatures.

They're supposedly saving a little over 100 acres for preservation and open space ; however, preservation and open space don't mean the same thing to everyone. I, myself, am sick of open space becoming ball fields and fences. Can't we save just SOME pieces of nature in this county? Do we have to develop everything? One thing I do like about boardwalks, if done properly they allow for wildlife to scamper around beneath them.

Simple things like looking for lunch for many of us working the northern industrial area can become a nightmare when all the street parking is eliminated for "special events", or we pull into the wrong parking deck that charges us $10 for an hour. There are indeed MANY of us who don't live uptown and DO drive in and park just to enjoy the ambiance. I have employees who drive down there from Statesville Ave. just to park the car and walk a couple of miles for exercise. (It' ain't walking friend up here and, besides they enjoy the scenery.)

And, sadly, Amazon, Alibaba, Google, etc, will kill much of the retail that killed uptown shopping. And, we enable with the huge tax incentives....but that's another story. (They're killing my business) I remember going to that Sears while it was open. Never seemed as large at the Southpark Store. The ones I miss the most are Belks and Ivey's up town. I still remember being a brat and pulling Santa's beard and being chased out of Belks. Okay, I have other more pleasant memories there like buying my BoyScout clothes.

Too bad the city has to dictate such a design and builders wouldn't recognize the potential already. I guess BOA did it on West Trade down at that campus across from the bus station. I used to own one of those little slots. The rent more than offset the price.

Besides, if it caught fire, it'd ruin all those bankers' ethic uptown. ;-) I've said it before, if I could sell my business I'd have to seriously consider opening a micro that served "Charlotte Gold", and have it located atop one of the old shafts. So much could do with that theme. One could even incorporate UNCC

This comes up from time to time on here. I'm old enough to remember when it was pursued in the 70's in many cities. I specifically remember Columbia, SC. Have they since reopened to traffic? What I remember were vacant sidewalks and a ghost town feel to it. While looking for information on Columbia, I came across this interesting article comparing successes with failures regarding street malls : http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/tag/pedestrian-mall/

Bunches of old rail spurs going through that area. Too bad they couldn't be utilized with the street car once that gets upgraded. At the least, turn the spurs into bike trails.

Ha! great memories of sitting in the car waiting on my dad to get the mail while watching the antics across the street at that old hotel. But, also, I miss all the brass and the smell of that old post office.

Funny you say that.... As it commemorates a local who fought in The Spanish American War, I wondered out loud to a coworker recently that it too might be up for correction if it offends Latinos in some way. Am I being offensive with this question?

Is that steel I'm seeing rise now?

The politicians who pushed this through are ahead of you with their investments. It's an old game. I finally watched Ken Burn's documentary on "The West" this week. In the last episode there's a story about how Mulhollen was pushed to get the LA aquifer built through and into land owned by the mayor and other politicians at the time. The Garden Parkway in Gaston County was set up like this, with Pittenger representing a "consortium" of politicians who bought up land all along the route. The only swamp that ever gets drained is the sensitive wetlands that are home to myriad creatures we ought to be protecting.