Union County

[Cadi40]

Correct me if I am wrong But I didn't seem to find a thread about Union County. Anyways, Union County is obviously a booming area of the Charlotte Metro Area and more specifically the Sun Valley Area. Sun Valley is home to 2 Shopping Centers at one intersection and soon to be 3. There are also talks of adding a Hotel to the Sun Valley Commons. There is a Publix which is in the third and newest shopping center set to open December 9th,  Which is called the Shoppes at Hanfield Village which looks to have a ton of retail space. One mile down the road there are plans for an enormous YMCA mixed use development off of 74 behind the Lowes. 

 

http://www.themosergroupinc.com/developments/sun-valley-commons-shopping-center/

http://www.mittcomtest.com/aris/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Indian-Trail-NC-The-Shoppes-at-Hanfield-Village.pdf

[tozmervo]

You say Sun Valley, but is that associated with any of the towns, or just the name of a shopping center? I'm always a little confused about the town areas/boundaries in that area.

[SgtCampsalot]

25 minutes ago, tozmervo said:

You say Sun Valley, but is that associated with any of the towns, or just the name of a shopping center? I'm always a little confused about the town areas/boundaries in that area.

As far as I know it is one of those vestigial monikers of a the rural area that wasn't incorporated, but was taken by modern developments. There's Sun Valley High School, Sun Valley Middle School, and strip malls and subdivisions with the name, but no municipality.

[Cadi40]

Sun Valley is apart of Indian Trail. 

[Dale]

Union County is glowing and growing, but downtown Monroe is languishing, arguably the most moribund of the ring city downtowns.

[SgtCampsalot]

1 hour ago, Dale said:

Union County is glowing and growing, but downtown Monroe is languishing, arguably the most moribund of the ring city downtowns.

And from what I've seen one of the most beautiful (in terms of old buildings and great blocks with potential).

I think it's the fact that it's too far to drive with no reliable freeway. 74 is hell past Matthews.

Edited December 17, 2017 by SgtCampsalot

[Dale]

2 minutes ago, SgtCampsalot said:

And from what I've seen one of the most beautiful (in terms of old buildings and great blocks with potential).

I think it's the fact that it's too far to drive with no reliable freeway. 74 is hell past Matthews.

Yeah, it's got good bones. A customer of mine, who claims to be wired in to the community, claims that old money stands in the way of progress.

[Cadi40]

Downtown Monroe is being revitalized slowly, Has great potential and is one of the larger suburbs of Charlotte with its own skyline as a matter of fact. Hopefully it gets to have its full potential. The area is filled with large plantation style homes that are historic and breath taking, Its a truly exceptional city.

[SydneyCarton]

Downtown Waxhaw is really nice.

 

What's going on with the corner of Providence Rd and Newtown Rd that Lat Purser was supposed to develop into a retail development?

[deleted]

Downtown Waxhaw on Friday night is unrecolnizable compared to five years ago.  So many restaurants full of so many people.  Great place for a walk down quiet streets also.  Place would be a perfect setting for a movie.  Can understand why it is growing so rapidly.

[SydneyCarton]

7 hours ago, JBS said:

Downtown Waxhaw on Friday night is unrecolnizable compared to five years ago.  So many restaurants full of so many people.  Great place for a walk down quiet streets also.  Place would be a perfect setting for a movie.  Can understand why it is growing so rapidly.

Downtown Waxhaw is beautiful.  It's one of my favorite places in the Charlotte metro.

[cjd5050]

8 hours ago, JBS said:

Downtown Waxhaw on Friday night is unrecolnizable compared to five years ago.  So many restaurants full of so many people.  Great place for a walk down quiet streets also.  Place would be a perfect setting for a movie.  Can understand why it is growing so rapidly.

You mean Downtown Waxhaw on a Saturday night...right?   Because if it's Friday the residents are still stuck in traffic on the way home.  

Seriously...it's pretty nice down there.

[KJHburg]

Waxhaw and the whole area around it as someone told me is a suburb of Ballantyne and many people work in south Charlotte so the commute while jammed in spots is not as long as you think.   Downtown Waxhaw really reflects 1000s of affluent residents that live nearby and it is one of my favorite downtowns too.   Very small but vibrant in its 2-3 blocks. 

[KJHburg]

Waxhaw is booming.  Old mill restored to apartments and retail.  Brand new apartments near downtown with lots of brick and brick details.   Most of downtown business district is from the 1880s believe it or not.  New businesses opening up.  Saw no retail vacancy downtown.    Check it out day trip down there a brewery, ice cream shop, great restaurants, unique shops, bike shop, the original rail trail with train viewing bridge.  The surrounding area is made of up of thousands of new homes of course too.    Lots of photos was with someone whose grandparents grew up in nearby Mineral Springs.  

Check out those new brick apartments they are great looking!   First photo is the covered bridge in Millbridge this is newer! 

Notice the historical phones some kind of outside phone that required coins or something crazy like that. 

[tarhoosier]

Those who want a light rail cross over at Publix, please check this out.

[turbocraig]

Speaking of Union Co, my friend that lives over there just forwarded this text.  Yikes.  
 

[KJHburg]

I can be the first to say Union County Rising.  New Atrium Union West Hospital rising right at the 74 Bypass Toll and 74 Business split in Stallings.  A crane rising in Union County captured my eyes.   Drive by. 

here is the final look of the hospital and MOB.

https://atriumhealth.org/locations/detail/atrium-health-union-west

[KJHburg]

From quaint small towns (not so small anymore) like Waxhaw to beautiful farm land, to lifted trucks on the back roads around the chicken houses and cotton fields to great neighborhoods like Millbridge and million dollar homes of Longview,  I love Union County!  Probably one of the most diverse counties in the region in terms of land  uses.  Farming in the eastern half and northern part and suburban leafy neighborhoods in western part nearest Meck. 

Stallings area today near the new Atrium Union West Hospital and some closeups of the toll road.  This is one of the few turnarounds under a highway overpass from one way connector roads.  This is commonplace in Texas at the Stallings Rd exit. 

 

 

[kickazzz2000]

Union County is our own piece of North Texas.

[Desert Power]

On 12/17/2017 at 6:53 PM, Cadi40 said:

Downtown Monroe is being revitalized slowly, Has great potential and is one of the larger suburbs of Charlotte with its own skyline as a matter of fact. Hopefully it gets to have its full potential. The area is filled with large plantation style homes that are historic and breath taking, Its a truly exceptional city.

It really has so much potential. A beautiful and relatively large grid.

[KJHburg]

Update on Atrium Union West hospital from the Biz Journal today.   see photos above for the latest this week. 

""Atrium Health Union West started going vertical this month, with plans for a topping out this fall. Crews broke ground on the hospital in January.  The facility, at about 150,000 square feet, will be at the intersection of U.S. Highway 74 and Stallings Road in Stallings. Plans call for 40 licensed beds, including eight for labor and delivery and four for intensive care. There will be three operating rooms, one room for C-sections and an endoscopy suite. Plans also call for a 10-bay emergency department with a helipad. Laboratory and pharmacy services will be available. Imaging capabilities will include MRIs, CT scans, X-rays and ultrasounds.  Atrium said the hospital should be "substantially complete" by the fourth quarter of 2021, with a targeted opening in early 2022.

Initial estimates put the cost at roughly $130 million ""

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2020/07/24/plans-move-ahead-for-atriums-union-west.html

[southernnorthcarolina]

I'm a native of Charlotte, grew up near SouthPark, and have lived in Fourth Ward, and the "poor part of Eastover" (a humble condo in the shadow of the manses of the rich and powerful), among other places.  But I built a house in Weddington, Union County, a decade ago.  I absolutely love Union County.  I have deer in front of my house, a pond with turtles, ducks, and a Great Blue Heron in back, and Red Tail Hawks wheeling overhead.  If I had to commute to central Charlotte on a daily basis, I might not be so happy, but that's not the case.  

For all its charm, Union County is, well, quirky.  Monroe (the older natives pronounce it MUNrow), in the middle of the rather large county, is the county seat.  But it doesn't run the county -- not politically, as it's a blue dot in a ruby red county, and not economically -- it's no longer the largest town in the county; Indian Trail is.  The power in Union County is in the string of towns lined allong and near the Mecklenburg County line -- Marvin, Weddington,  Wesley Chapel, Indian Trail, Stallings, Waxhaw (a bit further back from the line), and others.  Union County has, I believe, more incorporated towns than any other county in the state.  Why?  Blame involuntary annexation, which no longer is the law in NC.  But in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Union County's then unincorporated villages felt the need to protect themselves from annexation by Charlotte, which was not permitted to annex any part of incorporated towns.

And so, we have "paper towns."  My town of Weddington is one example.  It has a nominal property tax rate, and essentially provides no services other than zoning regulations/enforcement , and signage and lighting regulations.  No police department (the Union County Sheriff's Department patrols); fire protection is by VFDs; trash pickup by private contractors; water/sewer is, for the most part, individual wells and septic fields, or private mini-plants built by new subdivisions.  Almost all of Weddington is single-family residential, 40,000 sf lot minimums, with a sole strip retail center which preceded the incorporation of the town.  No multifamily, no office, no hotels, no industry.  And so, rather than denser land use within the town limit, we have the opposite; smaller lots are permitted in unincorporated areas of the county.  The operation hours of Weddington's City Hall, such as it is -- it's an old house -- gives a hint of how local government works:  9:00 to 1:00, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Weddington may feel pressure to loosen its anti-growth posture in coming years -- especially the Providence Road corridor.  Providence is slated to be four-laned down to Waxhaw "soon" (a word which has been used for more than two decades).  But being between Waverly to the north, and Waxhaw, which is more open to commercial development, to the south, it certainly seems to me (wearing my real estate developer hat) that the highest and best use of the remaining vacant land isn't more gated neighborhoods of McMansions on one acre lots.  And there is a lot of vacant land -- strawberry farms, small veggie farms, timber farms, horse stables and riding acadamies.  And that's just within the town limits of Weddington; further out in southern and eastern parts of the county, there's plenty of "big ag" -- poultry, pigs, dairy, corn, soybeans.  Great swaths of Union county will remain agricultural for a long time.  But  I get the feeling that a lot of large landholders closer to the Mecklenburg line are biding their time until pro-growth mayors and town councils are elected in some of the towns.

Back to the county at large, it is, as I said, rather quirky.  It retains a County Commission structured as it was decades (maybe over a century?) ago, when its population was relatively tiny:  five seats, all at-large.  All Republican in recent years, of course, a Democrat being about as likely to be elected county-wide in Union County as a Republican in Orange County.  And the public school system is neighborhood-based, with the result that the schools serving the mostly affluent northwestern part of the county -- the aforementioned towns near the Mecklenburg line -- have some of the highest average test scores in the state -- Weddington, Marvin Ridge, and Cuthbertson High Schools, for example.

Though I find Union County a great place to live, it is not without its problems.  All those people driving around with Steelers and Bills bumper stickers, for one thing.  But they're generally good folks, and put lots of money into the economy.  I'm a bit mystified by the explosion of gated communities -- crime isn't a problem here, but maybe the perception of exclusivity is the driving force.  We need more employment -- manufactuting, office, retail, because large lot single family development inevitably spends more county tax dollars than it provides.   

Edited July 27, 2020 by southernnorthcarolina
spelling

[CarolinaDaydreamin]

@southernnorthcarolina That was a hell of a writeup. You took a subject which I was only browsing through and got my attention for a few solid minutes, well done. 

[rancenc]

10 hours ago, CarolinaDaydreamin said:

@southernnorthcarolina That was a hell of a writeup. You took a subject which I was only browsing through and got my attention for a few solid minutes, well done. 

Same here!! Very well articulated Southernnorthcarolina!!!

[KJHburg]

had to go out to Anson County today and drove down NC 218 which has beautiful farmland.  Passed by Simpson Eggs in NE Union County  which has more HENS than Mecklenburg County has people!  If you eat eggs and live in the Charlotte area or the Carolinas you have probably eaten many Simpson Eggs from right here in Union County.  

HENS @ at Simpson Farms > number of people in Mecklenburg County! 

https://simpsonseggs.com/#:~:text=Simpson’s Eggs began in 1925 by Z.K Simpson,from hen houses straight into the processing plant.

My drive by photos

No Farms No Food especially for those who live in the Urban Planet 

and their population growth is greater than even Meck from 1969 to 25,000 hens to 1.3 M today. 

every day their hens lay enough eggs for every single man woman and child in Mecklenburg every day. 

Edited July 31, 2020 by KJHburg