Brooklyn Village Redevelopment in 2nd Ward

[Hushpuppy321]

Building more dense - taller and urban would reap windfalls with the neighboring Pearl District being planned a couple blocks away.  This area could be very different 10 years from now indeed.  Also - I love the idea of selling land to Sub-Developers, just wish that 1st Ward (Levine) would also be more aggressive at pursuing Sub-Developers to get things going.

[ertley]

22 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Basically the most newsworthy is that they are the verge of selling some of the land to "subdevelopers" i.e. those who will actually build it.

This is great news. I've long believed that this needed to be actually built by a variety of developers and, more importantly, architects so that it doesn't have a planned by central committee look and feel to it. 

[RANYC]

21 hours ago, ertley said:

This is great news. I've long believed that this needed to be actually built by a variety of developers and, more importantly, architects so that it doesn't have a planned by central committee look and feel to it. 

I assume peebles will flip county owned lots for what should be an easy profit right?  Is that standard?  County couldn’t have sold to these “sub developers” on its own?  Not wanting to cast aspersion, I genuinely want to understand where peebles adds value in this whole scenario?

Edited July 2, 2022 by RANYC

[kayman]

Peebles is one of the few major black-owned developers who have the credibility, investors-backing. Honestly Mecklenburg County owes it as those who are black-owned contractors, engineering, and development firms since it essentially killed a entire black neighborhood for "urban renewal".

[RANYC]

On 7/11/2022 at 12:35 PM, kayman said:

Peebles is one of the few major black-owned developers who have the credibility, investors-backing. Honestly Mecklenburg County owes it as those who are black-owned contractors, engineering, and development firms since it essentially killed a entire black neighborhood for "urban renewal".

Current Meck County taxpayers have a debt to whom, and how much of such debt does this deal satisfy?   Are these contractors local, or from anywhere in the country?

Edited July 12, 2022 by RANYC

[RANYC]

36 minutes ago, RANYC said:

Current Meck County taxpayers have a debt to whom, and how much of such debt does this land conveyance and contractor engagement requirements satisfy?   Are these contractors local, or from anywhere in the country?

I see someone is confused.  My post is asking 2 questions.  How can I word my questions to be clearer?  The questions were asked in response to a previous post that “Meck County owes it.”

[kayman]

2 hours ago, RANYC said:

Current Meck County taxpayers have a debt to whom, and how much of such debt does this land conveyance and contractor engagement requirements satisfy?   Are these contractors local, or from anywhere in the country?

 

2 hours ago, RANYC said:

I see someone is confused.  My post is asking 2 questions.  How can I word my questions to be clearer?  The questions were asked in response to a previous post that “Meck County owes it.”

Those families of the black business and property owners in the Brooklyn neighborhood.  If you don't understand that then everything else related to this topic and anything related to what that exactly means to long-term black Charlotteans but particularly those from the 2nd Ward will confuse you.

Edited July 11, 2022 by kayman

[joenc]

Has Peebles really built anything? His portfolio seems like a bunch of drawings and renderings. 

Interesting wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Donahue_Peebles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peebles_Corporation

Seems like he has found his niche in the world.

Honestly glad it has no chance of being built, looks pretty bad.

Edited July 11, 2022 by joenc

[RANYC]

14 hours ago, kayman said:

 

Those families of the black business and property owners in the Brooklyn neighborhood.  If you don't understand that then everything else related to this topic and anything related to what that exactly means to long-term black Charlotteans but particularly those from the 2nd Ward will confuse you.

My question asked where does Peebles add value?  You seemed to answer with “Meck County owes it," seemingly implying that allowing Peebles to potentially flip property for profit is some sort of atonement.  And if Peebles is getting enriched along with his selection of subcontractors not from the area, well then how are the descendants of Brooklyn residents getting any sort of restorative remuneration?

I'm not trying to render a judgment on whether Meck County should atone for what happened to the Brooklyn neighborhood, but taxpayers are allowed to question and challenge the county's conveyance of assets to a private developer, the terms of that conveyance, and whether the conveyance is the best course of action/highest and best use. 

Taxpayers also have a right to hear from county officials (in explicit terms) whether a conveyance is the full or partial satisfaction of a debt on the county's books owing to historical wrongdoings or misdeeds.  And there should be metrics around such a satisfaction and how a deal advances us toward closure.  

Edited July 12, 2022 by RANYC

[joenc]

Did the city/county use eminent domain in Brooklyn Village? Who owned the buildings back then?

From a local news site: https://www.wbtv.com/2022/06/28/tearing-down-brooklyn-black-community-charlotte-has-caused-generational-wealth-be-lost/

Yes. So the Alexander family was one of the most successful black families at that time, very active in the civil rights movement. They lived just down basically a block or so that way along with Stonewall, now, Brooklyn Village Avenue, and their house, they received $13,000 for it back in the early 60s, now that this whole property and granted they owned a chunk of it, but this whole property is worth almost $200 million. So you can see. And we ran, you know, an inflation calculator on that $30,000 figure, it’s still only 125,000 in today’s dollars.

Was the property forcibly taken, or was it just a bad trade?

[RANYC]

1 hour ago, joenc said:

Did the city/county use eminent domain in Brooklyn Village? Who owned the buildings back then?

From a local news site: https://www.wbtv.com/2022/06/28/tearing-down-brooklyn-black-community-charlotte-has-caused-generational-wealth-be-lost/

Yes. So the Alexander family was one of the most successful black families at that time, very active in the civil rights movement. They lived just down basically a block or so that way along with Stonewall, now, Brooklyn Village Avenue, and their house, they received $13,000 for it back in the early 60s, now that this whole property and granted they owned a chunk of it, but this whole property is worth almost $200 million. So you can see. And we ran, you know, an inflation calculator on that $30,000 figure, it’s still only 125,000 in today’s dollars.

Was the property forcibly taken, or was it just a bad trade?

The 2nd ward was lower than the other wards (the uptown Netherlands) and was hazardous for sewage and sanitation purposes.  The fact that emancipated slaves were relegated to the end-line for sewage was the original sin, no?  Did site improvements take place in 2nd ward before 1960s large-scale demolition in order to mitigate its placement and sanitation problems?

Site grading issues aside (and assuming placement was addressed post-"renewal"), frankly, I'd love to see the county re-create a dense, walkable, Black Main Street Corridor along a massive stretch of Uptown in 2nd ward.  Just as the city has affordable housing, we could create an affordable-rent or even affordable-ownership business/entrepreneurial district, replete with business incubation programs and legal/lending/capital formation/tech/accounting resources so that this walkable main street is a flourishing small business/small proprietorship strip that targets locally-owned and operated black businesses.  This black center of entrepreneurship could be a stand-out in the nation, while also celebrating black ingenuity and creativity, and probably drawing black entrepreneurs from other parts of the country and world to take advantage of our local initiative to affirm black participation in wealth creation through entrepreneurship and risk-taking.

The district could even go so far as to host national capital formation events like venture capital and seeding conferences focused on the black entrepreneurial class.  There are black M&A advisory firms that the City/County could recruit from around the country to set up offices here.  The small businesses in the Black Main Street could engage patrons likely to come from the Pearl Innovation District not far away.

I'm not against Peebles, and recognize he is a black entrepreneur, but nothing I've seen of his plans aligns with goals to create a sustainable, wealth-generating ecosystem/infrastructure for local, black Charlotteans.  And I'm not even sure it was really Peebles' responsibility to deliver such an idea and ecosystem.  Did the County consider it?

Edited July 12, 2022 by RANYC

[15895]

1 hour ago, RANYC said:

The 2nd ward was lower than the other wards (the uptown Netherlands) and was hazardous for sewage and sanitation purposes.  The fact that emancipated slaves were relegated to the end-line for sewage was the original sin, no?  Did site improvements take place in 2nd ward before 1960s large-scale demolition in order to mitigate its placement and sanitation problems?

Site grading issues aside (and assuming placement was addressed post-"renewal"), frankly, I'd love to see the county re-create a dense, walkable, Black Main Street Corridor along a massive stretch of Uptown in 2nd ward.  Just as the city has affordable housing, we could create an affordable-rent or even affordable-ownership business/entrepreneurial district, replete with business incubation programs and legal/lending/capital formation/tech/accounting resources so that this walkable main street is a flourishing small business/small proprietorship strip that targets locally-owned and operated black businesses.  This black center of entrepreneurship could be a stand-out in the nation, while also celebrating black ingenuity and creativity, and probably drawing black entrepreneurs from other parts of the country and world to take advantage of our local initiative to affirm black participation in wealth creation through entrepreneurship and risk-taking.

The district could even go so far as to host national capital formation events like venture capital and seeding conferences focused on the black entrepreneurial class.  There are black M&A advisory firms that the City/County could recruit from around the country to set up offices here.  The small businesses in the Black Main Street could engage patrons likely to come from the Pearl Innovation District not far away.

I'm not against Peebles, and recognize he is a black entrepreneur, but nothing I've seen of his plans aligns with goals to create a sustainable, wealth-generating ecosystem/infrastructure for local, black Charlotteans.  And I'm not even sure it was really Peebles' responsibility to deliver such an idea and ecosystem.  Did the County consider it?

That'd be nice, but to accomplish want you say, it needs to happen organically - wherever it does happen (I imagine a Black Main Street corridor would be in a neighborhood that has more of a black populace).

These entertainment districts, etc. by these large landholders in Charlotte aren't going to produce these great things you're talking about IMO. Tepper Entertainment Districts, Levine, Brooklyn Village, Elizabeth, Lincoln Harris's Legacy Union are all going to struggle to be anything organic. It's a shame Charlotte can't wrestle away some of these parcels or maybe try to buy them or place some very strict zoning/reviewing/approving of projects within uptown (which I think NC stripped away a lot of zoning rights of the cities back when they took power under McCrory. So I don't even think that is possible?). Private developers and their investors. IMO, will not do what is best for the community on their own (and I don't think we should expect them to). I think the best the city can do is try to buy properties and re-sell them as smaller lots and try to pursue goals that way. Maybe sell them off to even smaller developers or to multiple developers (thinking how that worked out on Brooklyn Village Ave. during the exit ramp conversions). But I don't think any politicians in Charlotte want to spend much political capital on an issue of a city with over 700,000 people when there are so many needs overall.

But all that sounds good, I just imagine it being somewhere outside of uptown.

 

[ertley]

2 hours ago, RANYC said:

...frankly, I'd love to see the county re-create a dense, walkable, Black Main Street Corridor along a massive stretch of Uptown in 2nd ward.  Just as the city has affordable housing, we could create an affordable-rent or even affordable-ownership business/entrepreneurial district, replete with business incubation programs and legal/lending/capital formation/tech/accounting resources so that this walkable main street is a flourishing small business/small proprietorship strip that targets locally-owned and operated black businesses.  This black center of entrepreneurship could be a stand-out in the nation, while also celebrating black ingenuity and creativity, and probably drawing black entrepreneurs from other parts of the country and world to take advantage of our local initiative to affirm black participation in wealth creation through entrepreneurship and risk-taking.

The district could even go so far as to host national capital formation events like venture capital and seeding conferences focused on the black entrepreneurial class.  There are black M&A advisory firms that the City/County could recruit from around the country to set up offices here.  The small businesses in the Black Main Street could engage patrons likely to come from the Pearl Innovation District not far away.

Rather than trying to recreate, because resuscitate isn't even accurate for, Brooklyn Village, I would (IM*H*O) love to see such efforts directed at an area with existing Black businesses, such as Five Points. I agree with @AirNostrumMADthat trying to engineer human activity according to planners' wishes or desires fail just as often as they succeed. The city achieves more when it looks at where people are or headed and encourages or accentuates it rather than trying to re-direct it. Municipal officials aren't generally good at influencing people's ideas of what's cool or worthwhile--as a matter of fact, I think avatars of activity and cognescenti of cool are more often than not are operating in opposition to what city fathers have in mind for them. 

Build equitable infrastructure and let the people do the rest.  IMO.     

[RANYC]

1 hour ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

That'd be nice, but to accomplish want you say, it needs to happen organically - wherever it does happen (I imagine a Black Main Street corridor would be in a neighborhood that has more of a black populace).

These entertainment districts, etc. by these large landholders in Charlotte aren't going to produce these great things you're talking about IMO. Tepper Entertainment Districts, Levine, Brooklyn Village, Elizabeth, Lincoln Harris's Legacy Union are all going to struggle to be anything organic. It's a shame Charlotte can't wrestle away some of these parcels or maybe try to buy them or place some very strict zoning/reviewing/approving of projects within uptown (which I think NC stripped away a lot of zoning rights of the cities back when they took power under McCrory. So I don't even think that is possible?). Private developers and their investors. IMO, will not do what is best for the community on their own (and I don't think we should expect them to). I think the best the city can do is try to buy properties and re-sell them as smaller lots and try to pursue goals that way. Maybe sell them off to even smaller developers or to multiple developers (thinking how that worked out on Brooklyn Village Ave. during the exit ramp conversions). But I don't think any politicians in Charlotte want to spend much political capital on an issue of a city with over 700,000 people when there are so many needs overall.

But all that sounds good, I just imagine it being somewhere outside of uptown.

 

I was intentional in not relegating a black business incubation district to an existing mostly black residential area on the westside:

• Wanted it to be in a high-profile, centralized spot in center city near professional class resources
• Couldn't think of a better nod to Brooklyn's history than a concentrated, walkable initiative encouraging and celebrating wealth creation through Black entrepreneurship
• Wanted a placement that encouraged all-inclusive patronage of a Black Business Corridor...while this is a corridor celebrating american ideals in risk-taking and entrepreneurship but affirming those ideals for the black community who've historically been shut out of the capital formation and deployment ecosystem in america, black wealth creation through entrepreneurship can NOT happen without white patronage, and there should not be relegation of black entrepreneurship to just traditionally/historically black neighborhoods even though black businesses servicing black residents is key...Uptown is better suited to service a cross-section of Charlotteans, and btw, Charlotte has a large black population living in very mixed or even historically white neighborhoods in Charlotte/Meck County
• Some of these incubated, emerging black businesses might be coffee shops, restaurants, convenience stores, black-owned franchises that could cater to students and employees of new institutions and businesses in Pearl
• Because an emerging business corridor needs capital, the district would be proximal to Charlotte's banking centers, many of which have capital programs as part of equity initiatives that target minority-owned firms, and so you could keep those ties strong

1 hour ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

That'd be nice, but to accomplish want you say, it needs to happen organically - wherever it does happen (I imagine a Black Main Street corridor would be in a neighborhood that has more of a black populace).

These entertainment districts, etc. by these large landholders in Charlotte aren't going to produce these great things you're talking about IMO. Tepper Entertainment Districts, Levine, Brooklyn Village, Elizabeth, Lincoln Harris's Legacy Union are all going to struggle to be anything organic. It's a shame Charlotte can't wrestle away some of these parcels or maybe try to buy them or place some very strict zoning/reviewing/approving of projects within uptown (which I think NC stripped away a lot of zoning rights of the cities back when they took power under McCrory. So I don't even think that is possible?). Private developers and their investors. IMO, will not do what is best for the community on their own (and I don't think we should expect them to). I think the best the city can do is try to buy properties and re-sell them as smaller lots and try to pursue goals that way. Maybe sell them off to even smaller developers or to multiple developers (thinking how that worked out on Brooklyn Village Ave. during the exit ramp conversions). But I don't think any politicians in Charlotte want to spend much political capital on an issue of a city with over 700,000 people when there are so many needs overall.

But all that sounds good, I just imagine it being somewhere outside of uptown.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I am definitely NOT proposing an entertainment district.  This is a business incubation district and I don't see planning/density/walkability/proximity to ancillary business resources as counter-productive to the success of such a corridor.

Edited July 12, 2022 by RANYC

[kayman]

15 hours ago, RANYC said:

My question asked where does Peebles add value?  You seemed to answer with “Meck County owes it," seemingly implying that allowing Peebles to potentially flip property for profit is some sort of atonement.  And if Peebles is getting enriched along with his selection of subcontractors not from the area, well then how are the descendants of Brooklyn residents getting any sort of restorative remuneration?

I'm not trying to render a judgment on whether Meck County should atone for what happened to the Brooklyn neighborhood, but taxpayers are allowed to question and challenge the county's conveyance of assets to a private developer, the terms of that conveyance, and whether the conveyance is the best course of action/highest and best use. 

Taxpayers also have a right to hear from county officials (in explicit terms) whether a conveyance is the full or partial satisfaction of a debt on the county's books owing to historical wrongdoings or misdeeds.  And there should be metrics around such a satisfaction and how a deal advances us toward closure.  

What is embolden shows that you don't understand that a tyranny or tyrannical decision of a majority wouldn't nor shouldn't be determined by the "taxpayers" of a marginalized minority, i.e., black business and property owners of Brooklyn.  That's why I said it would only confuse you as you seem to not understand what doing right by black Charlotteans would be the purpose of awarding this project to one of the few black-owned real estate developers. 

[RANYC]

12 minutes ago, kayman said:

What is embolden shows that you don't understand that a tyranny or tyrannical decision of a majority wouldn't nor shouldn't be determined by the "taxpayers" of a marginalized minority, i.e., black business and property owners of Brooklyn.  That's why I said it would only confuse you as you seem to not understand what doing right by black Charlotteans would be the purpose of awarding this project to one of the few black-owned real estate developers. 

Ah ok, well I’m pretty limited so hopefully everyone else on UP understands in detail what it means to “do right by Black Charlotteans” in regards to Brooklyn, and so no further discussion of whether current plans or future actions actually align with a quantifiable set of Goals is necessary.

[JRCLT]

Sometimes I see people try to restore what was destroyed but glueing back a broken vase doesn’t end up looking as it once did and the longer one waits to put it back together, the higher the probability of pieces getting lost. Though personally I wouldn’t want this project to replace the Brooklyn community as it was razed- erased… and while the imprint is there all what made that community isn’t coming back the way it was or the same people that once inhabited that area. What I would like to see from this project is something more of a new neighborhood (second ward isn’t even really one at this point). Setting up a platform for like some others have said to enable people to actually bring the life and character into that platform. Also how that platform- or foundation is built is very much key in what I would say could be an inclusive neighborhood of all kinds of people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and cultures. It is an honorable idea to pay homage to what was once there and the people that once lived there after being forcibly removed…but it really isn’t coming back at this point. I hope that is not the idea people have of this development.

(Eminent Domain is a method by which to expropriate private land for public use with of course, compensation). I am not familiar with how effective and cut-throat this policy was but to me from what I’ve read and seen it seemed to be without successful retaliation, though I think eminent domain is used rarely these days.

Interesting infographic I saw:


If it’s successful it will foster a new neighborhood that will hopefully be walkable, dense, inclusive, vibrant, and will also contribute to uptown’s population which it definitively needs.

[15895]

I don’t mind the rendering I’ve seen in the past which likely is outdated, etc.

It’d be awesome to have a huge affordable component, a large low-income component, senior housing, maybe a K-12 school, that tallest building have an urban Walmart, maybe a Lidl, micro unit retail spaces in those low rise buildings etc. it’d be nice if the mid rise 6-7 floor buildings had varying heights in them with different colors as depicted to not look like super block apartments. 

Ideally, I’d just like to see a more diverse group of people be included in urban Charlotte. Lower income families and seniors, etc would have much needed transit mobility that blows outside of the most urban (and typically wealthier) areas of Charlotte. 

That would make me happier with Levine land/North Tryon being more civic, more office, etc if it bled into an organic feeling portion of uptown with diverse residents. 

[Reverie39]

I don't know if this was mentioned before, but Google Maps is now showing "Brooklyn Village Ave".

[j-man]

If only they could buy the Aquatic Center out and use that land too. 

[DMann]

Act one point I heard the Aquatic Center was going to be moved over near the Grady Cole Center, anyone else remember that?

[rancenc]

From a recent episode of "NC Weekend"!

 

[KJHburg]

from Twitter tonight

Joe Bruno
@JoeBrunoWSOC9
On Tuesday, #MeckBOCC will get a long awaited update on the Brooklyn Village redevelopment project.

Lets hope there is some kind of announcement of land sale to some developer who actually build something.  I keep hearing rumblings of 2 residential towers but I will wait and see.  

[rancenc]

Latest news from WCNC on the Brooklyn Development project.

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/connect-the-dots/brooklyn-village-development-uptown-makeover/275-b9dac516-234b-4235-a3e1-4cd30e3276b7

[KJHburg]

Here are the slides from Twitter.