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Charlotte-Douglas Airport (CLT) Expansion


uptownliving

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Er, "How much land is an airport worth?"

We have a dedicated, single-use chunk of land well over the size of the 277 loop sitting in West Charlotte. And that doesn't include the swath of land around the airport that has sharply limited development potential because of zoning restrictions, no one wants to live that close to an airport, etc. At what point do we say, "air travel isn't worth that cost"?

It's a very good point. There were once many very nice neighborhoods in that area that pretty much died after 1982 when Piedmont opened the hub in Charlotte. There were huge fights over this issue including long multi-year court battles over the building of this airport vs the residents. Eventually I believe the city ended up buying out a number of homeowners because of the bad quality of life the airport noise brought down on those places. Prior to that, there wasn't much noise as plane traffic was limited to just what served Charlotte. Ironically in the times prior to the hub, Charlotteans had more choices in terms of airline competition.

IMO, I think this is also the reason the Freedom Drive retail corridor died out. It was still growing in the late 1970s. By the end of the 1980s, it was in severe decline.

File this one under the "growth at any cost" category.

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Er, "How much land is an airport worth?"

We have a dedicated, single-use chunk of land well over the size of the 277 loop sitting in West Charlotte. And that doesn't include the swath of land around the airport that has sharply limited development potential because of zoning restrictions, no one wants to live that close to an airport, etc. At what point do we say, "air travel isn't worth that cost"?

I understand the exercise, I was just questioning the point of it. Unless one is suggesting to close or move the airport and develop the land, it is just interesting information with no real value (except to tax collectors I suppose).

Close the airport? I don't think any reasonable person in this community would advocate that.

Move it? Where? No community would embrace a hub airport and if placed in the middle of nowhere, there would still by the NIMBY factor. I believe the only recent example of a city doing that successfully that I know of is Denver, and they had a bit more open land to work with out there. I've also heard complaints about how far the airport is from the city.

It can be argued whether airport expansion has been good for Charlotte or not. You know what the politicians say. My biggest beef is that even after the airport expanded and they were buying people out (which is a misnomer, they would simply find you a house somewhere else and tell you take-it-or-leave-it), they failed to appropriately zone the land around the airport to discourage new residential development in the noise contours. It SHOULD be zoned commercial/industrial. Typical, the same way they failed to zone 485 interchanges to avoid congestion.

I don't think the Freedom Drive downfall was due to the airport. It's really not that close to the airport and not in the flight path/contours. The Coliseum area is much closer and it's done just fine in terms of development.

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IMO, I think this is also the reason the Freedom Drive retail corridor died out. It was still growing in the late 1970s. By the end of the 1980s, it was in severe decline.

Freedom Drive retail died because the area became a crime ridden ghetto. It was surrounded by Enderly Park, Thomasboro, Ashley Park and other newly formed, high crime areas. Retail were losing tons from shoplifting and other crime. Freedom Village and other anchor stores died out around that time. It went the same route as Wilkerson Blvd.in the 60s.

Edited by caterpillar2
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I would absolutely love to have Dublin and Rome added to our list of Charlotte destinatons. I personally am not too thrilled about Rio. I don't really like Rio. Been there a few times. One thing that I learned and would like to pass along is if you go there, dress up like a maid or a janitor, carry no jewlry, and stick to the main streets where theres lots of people. It is not a safe city. However, it is beautiful and great if you can get into the country and away from tourism (with a trained guide). IMO, Buenos Aires would have been much better. It is a wonderful city (IMO).

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I would absolutely love to have Dublin and Rome added to our list of Charlotte destinatons. I personally am not too thrilled about Rio. I don't really like Rio. Been there a few times. One thing that I learned and would like to pass along is if you go there, dress up like a maid or a janitor, carry no jewlry, and stick to the main streets where theres lots of people. It is not a safe city. However, it is beautiful and great if you can get into the country and away from tourism (with a trained guide). IMO, Buenos Aires would have been much better. It is a wonderful city (IMO).
Sao Paulo was not and is not going to be availible anytime in the near future. I believe however that buenos aires is being looked at. Edited by CltFlyer
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It's great having a flight to Rio and also Paris now too, but to play devil's advocate, in this bad economy how many people would travel to these places. Sure there are businessmen who might sometimes travel and some people from connecting cities in the case for Rio, but really not that many people need to go to Brazil IMO. My dad use to fly there for work and it was a hassle due to all the visa restrictions but he stopped business over there because it was too dangerous because of the lack of regulation laws. Again I'm just playing devil's advocate, if this works out its great for Charlotte, I'm just worried there's not gonna be enough demand for this type of destination in Charlotte, especially without a consulate in the city like uptownliving eluded to.

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Obviously this is just one guy, but I do have a neighbor that is an executive in the paper business (Domtar) and he is getting back from Brazil today. I know his company does quite a bit of business down there, as did Weyerhauser (whom he worked for previously) - enough work that he learned Portuguese. I'll have to ask him how crowded the flight was to and from.

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No doubt it is not being done with the intention of Charlotte being the primary origination, just a gateway. I'm sure there will be lots of flights from other cities feeding this one, including code shares from other airlines.

You are correct, from a business standpoint I believe Brazil is kind of dead right now. It's been quite a few years since I was there (Sao Paulo), but even then, it was kind of a pain to get in and out and it wasn't all too safe for Americans, although the area I was, Alphaville, just outside Sao Paulo, was better than most.

There are a number of Brazilian companies investing in plants in the Carolinas, though.

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....

I don't think the Freedom Drive downfall was due to the airport. It's really not that close to the airport and not in the flight path/contours. The Coliseum area is much closer and it's done just fine in terms of development.

Are you kidding? The planes fly so low over Freedom Drive between Freedom Village to I-85 you can see if the passengers have brushed their teeth or not.
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Freedom Drive retail died because the area became a crime ridden ghetto. It was surrounded by Enderly Park, Thomasboro, Ashley Park and other newly formed, high crime areas. Retail were losing tons from shoplifting and other crime. Freedom Village and other anchor stores died out around that time. It went the same route as Wilkerson Blvd.in the 60s.
Uhh yes. This happened when the middle class moved from the area due to the noise from the airport. I worked on Freedom drive from '78-'81 and I can tell you that it was not in decline then. There was a new mall, a newfa Kroger supermarket, Circuit city had a new store, Lowes had built one of their first prototype warehouse type stores, and there was a lot of other new restaurants and retail going in.
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Are you kidding? The planes fly so low over Freedom Drive between Freedom Village to I-85 you can see if the passengers have brushed their teeth or not.

When landing on runway 23, yes, they are pretty low, and 23 is a very active landing runway. But they are flying across Freedom Drive and typically that is not the highest noise impact, especially when landing. And that runway in the reverse direction, Runway 5, is rarely used for take-offs (higher noise level), occasionally at night when use of the parallel runways is prohibited. So I would say that Freedom Drive is impacted much less by aircraft noise than other areas.

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The Rio flight is probably just the first of several flights to SA from CLT (depending on the economy). TAM is now a part of the Star Alliance and US Airways and TAM are working on a code-share agreement for domestic Brazilian feed. Sao Paulo would have made better sense, but it was not being offered as a new route authority by the DOT. What is of note is that US and CLT beat out Delta at ATL and American at JFK for this route.

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It's great having a flight to Rio and also Paris now too, but to play devil's advocate, in this bad economy how many people would travel to these places. Sure there are businessmen who might sometimes travel and some people from connecting cities in the case for Rio, but really not that many people need to go to Brazil IMO. My dad use to fly there for work and it was a hassle due to all the visa restrictions but he stopped business over there because it was too dangerous because of the lack of regulation laws. Again I'm just playing devil's advocate, if this works out its great for Charlotte, I'm just worried there's not gonna be enough demand for this type of destination in Charlotte, especially without a consulate in the city like uptownliving eluded to.

It is my understanding from sources that only ten percent of the flights to Rio are expected to originate from Charlotte.

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CLT is featured as the cover story for this month's Airports Magazine (a UK publication). You can pick it up in the mag section of B&N and Books-a-Million.

I looked online and didn't see what you refer to. They have the Feb./Mar. version online, so what you refer to must be in the Apr./May edition?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Co has been running 1x-2x 735-ewr 1x mostly....then iah was added in November for 2x 735 now 3 more 735's have been added to ewr at the expense or more erjs, but i can take less frequncys on bigger aircraft. from may to june we have 1x737-700, 2x733, and 1x 735 to ewr and 1x 735 to iah.

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Co has been running 1x-2x 735-ewr 1x mostly....then iah was added in November for 2x 735 now 3 more 735's have been added to ewr at the expense or more erjs, but i can take less frequncys on bigger aircraft. from may to june we have 1x737-700, 2x733, and 1x 735 to ewr and 1x 735 to iah.

LOL! Oh no, looks like I'm going to have to take airport lingo at CPCC to know what your talking about. :dontknow:

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Correct me if I am wrong:

  • CO = Continental Airlines
  • EWR = Newark Airport
  • IAH - Houston Airport (some like to call it george bush airport)
  • ERJs = Brazilian plane (Embraer)
  • 733, 735, 737, etc = variants of Boeing's 737

So "Co has been running 1x-2x 735-ewr 1x mostly....then iah was added in November for 2x 735 now 3 more 735's have been added to ewr at the expense or more erjs, but i can take less frequncys on bigger aircraft. from may to june we have 1x737-700, 2x733, and 1x 735 to ewr and 1x 735 to iah."

basically translates to....

"Continental airlines has increased its traffic to Charlotte from it's hubs in Newark and Houston by running bigger aircraft. Boeing 737s have replaced the smaller Brazilian jets. However there is less frequency"

.

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