Will the University City area ever be cleaned up?

[mediamongrel]

Well nothing is free.

[peaceloveunderstanding]

indeed, the bus has some interesting stops between UNCC and downtown, or so it looks (I have yet to ride it)

[atlrvr]

I've ridden the one from UNCC to downtown plenty of times.......it's no big deal, but it's not particularly fast.....LRT should solve that.

In general the people who this route ride the buses do so because they are going to/from a job, or are going to UNCC, they not looking to start a fight on a city bus just to get arrested for fun......maybe if people would grow some balls and actually ride the damn thing, it wouldn't seem so intimidating.

[monsoon]

I think that is more a failure on CATS part rather than needing to put more xport at UNCC. CATS has been requested several times to put in more radial routes say from UNCC to University City to Lake Norman and back without requiring a trip to downtown. If they did that then you would certainly have more bus usage. But right now there is no way to go anywhere without going into downtown first and that is a major downer to using the system. Both in time and the demographics that you run into.

[Seeker]

I think that is more a failure on CATS part rather than needing to put more xport at UNCC.  CATS has been requested several times to put in more radial routes say from UNCC to University City to Lake Norman and back without requiring a trip to downtown.  If they did that then you would certainly have more bus usage.  But right now there is no way to go anywhere without going into downtown first and that is a major downer to using the system.    Both in time and the demographics that you run into.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I dont' ride the bus. prefer to get to where I want to go and leave on my own time. But what is the downer in demographics? Too many poor people? Too many young people? Are the buses unruly? Do you have to go through the transit center? Seems to me if you don't have a car and you wnat to get downtown nothing wrong with the bus reagardless of if you're a college studnet or not. Unless you don't like being with the locals. i'm sure a lot of college students have had that mindset at one tiem or another or know someone who has.

[mediamongrel]

Umm...I kinda prefer not to hang out at the transit center in any city. The transit center demographics dont represent the population of Charlotte as a whole. It might represent the lower class & lower-middle class, but how can you say that no one should have a problem with going through the downtown bus station? I've been to the Greyhound Terminal in Utah and even that was pretty seedy there!

[peaceloveunderstanding]

I've ridden the one from UNCC to downtown plenty of times.......it's no big deal, but it's not particularly fast.....LRT should solve that.

In general the people who this route ride the buses do so because they are going to/from a job, or are going to UNCC, they not looking to start a fight on a city bus just to get arrested for fun......maybe if people would grow some balls and actually ride the damn thing, it wouldn't seem so intimidating.

All right, thats good. I probably will ride it often.

[Sabaidee]

There's two main routes that goes to UNCC, but CATS has streamlined one of those route. The original route was the 39, that did take quite awhile to get to UNCC, it went on Central then Eastway then US 29. Now that route no longer serves UNCC and the current 11 Tryon route was make shorter by no longer serving the Hidden Valley neighorhood off of Sugar Creek and Tryon. The 29 UNCC route goes from UNCC to Southpark, bypassing the Transit Center. When I was working at AT&T in URP, the 54 Express was mosy of the time packed going towards uptown from one of the park and ride lots.

[atlrvr]

But the bigger problem is the suburban housing existing today. The houses are low-quality with no architectual distinction. The communities lack convenience, and most don't allow for major improvements to the properties.......who wants to live there when these homes began to have serious issues in 20-30 years? Especially when there are brand new cheap houses just a couple of miles further out.

It seems that my ranting in this thread is already seeing validity.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/13953843.htm

The area is on the downhill slide, and I fully expect this problem to accelerate. I think for this problem to be mitigated at all, UNCC will need to use whatever political influence it has to change patterns of development, though I fear it is already too late.

[monsoon]

Indeed, it is truely a shame as it could have been much different. BTW I am not sure what good it would do for UNCC to get involved in local Charlotte zoning matters, especially when it comes to fighting the developer lobby in this city. UNCC has no dogs in that fight.

The big problem there is the failure of the Charlotte City Council to stick to any of its endless land use plans that have been developed for the area. And it absolutely ignored the University HOA that existed in the area in the mid 80s whose goal was to manage development into something acceptable. The City, and the County prior to annexation, has bowed over to every single developer and big business that wanted to throw up crap in that area. It started with Nationsbank, CMC, and the developer of that strip mall at 49 & Harris, all of which objected to state plans to build a very pedestrian friendly and unique set of interesections there because it would interfer with "their" use of the property. They got their way, the area was never developed as planned and we have the mess that we see now.

And there is still this mentality in the city that if it isn't in SE Charlotte or downtown, then it really doesn't matter what happens to it anyway.

Every single time a developer wants to throw up a starter home development, and I mean truely revolting developments, the city approves it. period. Until that is fixed the area will continue its decline to ruin. This is why I said in the other thread that running a transit line out to this area is just a waste of huge amounts of money. The area is already too far gone to make any use out of it.

[SmellyCat]

I get the impression that this part of town will always been the bald-headed stepchild to Uptown and South Charlotte. When I lived there, most of the residents indeed seemed to feel that way, and I think the preference the city has given to widening the south portion of 485 before completing the northern portion speaks volumes to that belief being fact.

And the 3-sides vinyl starter homes keep growing like stinkweeds....has anyone seen the atrocity off of Mallard Creek Church Rd. near the intersection of Mallard Creek? Row after row of small plot cookie cutter starter homes that all look like you could punch your fist through them from the outside.

[dubone]

I'm not convinced that University City is completely a lost cause, and now that the University City Partners is in effect, it hopefully will have time to improve the area in preparation for LRT in 12 years.

I feel that a few things are necessary to improving the area.

Firstly, change the ridiculous name! My preference would be to rename the area after a historic town about a mile south of the University campus. It is Newell. The whole area could be known as Newell. That way, it doesn't present the problem of seeming cheesy coining a new name.

Secondly, strictly enforce that all remaining vacant land be built on a gridded street network, without all the silly little curves that suburban streets always tend to do. The focus of the gridded area should be roughly bounded by UNCC on the north, 85 on the west, Harris on the east, and Rocky River Rd on the south. I have drawn in an example of how this could work. They might look really small, but even the smallest block I have drawn is still roughly similar to the downtown block sizes. The beauty of a grid is that it eliminates a significant amount of pressure from the thoroughfare system, even if the streets are just small neighborhood streets. The streets should be allowed to go up and down with topography. Also, just because the streets are aligned doesn't mean that that there needs to be an intersection to cross the thoroughfare.

There is so much vacant land right now in the, um, Newell area. Just fitting in a grid will allow for the land to develop in a much more urban pattern. The benefit of a grid is that it tends to encourage developers to use the land most efficiently. Even if single family housing is built there, it will naturally become more urban in nature than those squiggly fungal streets that define suburbia. While much of that gridded area could be single family homes, the blocks near Tryon could start to developed into denser, walkable pattern.

Non-thoroughfare interchange bridges also need to be built across I85 as part of the supporting infrastructure for the grid. It will allow URP traffic to enter the new grid without need to pile onto Harris Boulevard. The over reliance on Tryon and Harris has destroyed the area.

Thirdly, transit oriented zoning should be put into place so that most of the remaining land between University City Blvd and I85 will be built in an urban, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use manner. The area can then grow over the next two decades to have an urban core. The suburban parts of northeast Mecklenburg are currently prototypical sprawl, with a sprawling University as its core. While much money is being spent to recreate the University campus, a town must be built around it.

[monsoon]

I actually used to live in Newell, and I will tell you the last thing the residents there would want to happen would be to have thier very small historic town expanded to cover the entire area. It would completely dillute the identity they have tried to keep for themselves in the last 25 years. The University area has been the University area for so long, I don't see any way that would get changed. Also URP (University Research Park) is a brand that probably won't be changed to NRP.

You hit the nail on the head as it is the failure of the city to stick to the plans drawn up to the area, via zoning restrictions that have caused the currently mess that is up there now. There are several very elaborate plans to create pedestrian friendly streets, more grids, etc the the city council complete ignores everytime a business wants to open a new big box up there.

Unfortunately the map you have presented does not take into account the terrain of the land there. The reason those places shown don't have development is because the land is unbuildable either due to power lines, creeks and other natural barriers, or they are locked up in private hands by organizations that won't be too keen on having a grid forced on them. UNCC, Wachovia, CMC, and the owners of the former IBM campus are examples of this. And finally, the NCDOT will not allow all of the pullout connections onto Harris Blvd, 29 & 49. They too have been part of the problem there as the NCDOT has little interesting in local zoning matters when they build, what they see there, as a major thoroughfare. There is also a railroad track that parallels Old Concord road then 49 that will prevent a grid from being built there.

[dubone]

Yeah, I'm sure a grid isn't exactly feasible as shown, but I'm sure that if planners and city council would get their act together, there is still enough vacant land to salvage the area as an urban center. As for land owners willingness to conform to a grid, I say that we should use eminent domain and force it. This place is crazy that it puts up with antiurban transportation design simply to avoid up front hassles. This city must plan to be a huge city now or be stuck with serious issues.

[MZT]

I'm sure the Rhino Times lurkers will thank you, for validating their opinion that urbanism must be forced on the unwilling. Hey, they got exactly what they wanted.... We may as well let other areas set a better example. After University becomes another EastSide maybe they'll come around.

[dubone]

Well transportation design should be forced where appropriate. Outside of reasonable zoning I'm not really saying the area should be forced to be completely urban. Even if 90 % of the grid area I drew were Dilworth style suburban development but gridded to avoid the traffic problems, 10% could be built like a town center. Clearly people like Ghazi want to build densely, there just isn't urban street infrastructure to support it. Thus U city's problems.

[ellifyno]

I've been lurking here for a few weeks, but finally decided to join. I had actually been considering starting a thread similar to this since I know that there are a lot of people on this board who view the University area in a not-so-positive light. As a UNCC student, I'd like to offer a much different opinion. Unfortunately, I can't.

I've always been really into roads and bridges, so they tend to be the first things I notice. In University City, there's just not enough of either. I know it costs money to build bridges, but it seems like there was a point made of not building any bridges over 85 unless there's an exit. In this area, the only exception is Mallard Creek Road. Going south from Mallard Creek, you reach Rozzelles Ferry Road, just south of exit 36, before you find another road that goes across 85 without an interchange. Going north, the next one you find is Winecoff School Road, just south of exit 58. Each of those is roughly 10 miles down 85 from Mallard Creek Road. This forces you to deal with a very limited amount of thoroughfares, regardless of if they're convenient. Harris is a particularly good (or really, a particularly bad) example of this. While some of the grid that dubone suggested might not be feasible (especially the part on UNCC's campus), it would be extremely beneficial if there were roads that ran parallel to Harris over 85 -- one connecting Research Drive to JW Clay Boulevard and one connecting IBM Drive to McCullough Drive.

As it is right now, entirely too much traffic is forced to use Harris. And the lanes on Harris don't help at all. Going east on Harris from 77, you have two lanes all the way to just before Mallard Creek. A third lane then sprouts up on the right. At IBM/Research Drive, a fourth lane appears on the left. The far right lane ends at the next intersection, acting as a right-turn lane onto 85 South. Maybe 500 feet later, the right lane is back, serving as a free-flow lane from 85 South onto Harris. Shortly after that, the left lane ends, turning left onto 85 North. Another lane is added on the right, coming from 85 North, and lasting through University Executive Park/JM Keynes Drive, not even a half-mile later, leaving Harris with three lanes. The right lane then ends in an extremely bad place, just past the entrance to the Grand Promenade shopping center and literally right before the interchange with Highway 49. There's probably about 500 feet or so between the end of that lane and the ramp for 49. However, it can't be extended to the exit ramp because of an entrance to the Home Depot/Circuit City shopping center that's over there. The entrance essentially serves as a way to enter the shopping center without driving on Highway 49. That might sound like a good idea, but it's at an odd angle (image of ramp to shopping center) and it brings you in to the back of the shopping center. One might think it would be a good truck entrance, except for the kink in it. If that entrance were to be straightened, the lane could turn into an exit-only lane for 49.

I honestly didn't mean to ramble that long about that particular stretch of Harris, but it's a perfect example of the problems I see in University City. The infrastructure has been sacrificed to allow developers to do what they want. That ramp to the shopping center could be eliminated without truly affecting anyone, and certainly it could be straightened. To me, the safety of drivers should be the first priority for road projects. The next priority should be doing the most good for the most people. Both of those would be accomplished by removing or straightening the shopping center entrance. However, the developer's needs were put before those of anyone else's. Or maybe I'm just biased against that shopping center. I went to Discount Tire there, which is right of Tryon. I figured I'd go to McDonald's while I was waiting for my car. It's not the longest walk in the world, but you really get the idea of just how sprawly that shopping center is. Especially since there are no sidewalks. I don't understand how development like that exists.

Then again, I don't understand how most of the development around this area exists. There are more strip malls and shopping centers in Charlotte than I think I've ever seen anywhere else, and very few of them have any character or any reason to go to them. University Place looks like it was once meant to be a good concept with grand aspirations, but gave up along the way. The area around the lake doesn't even seem like it's in the same world as Wal-Mart and Best Buy, let alone the same shopping center. Tryon pretty much from Uptown to Harris appears as if it's seen better days. For being what's considered the main street through Charlotte, it's embarrassing.

I keep hoping that light rail will help, but the truth is that with how far away it is, this area stands to end up in really bad shape before that happens. I'm not entirely sure what the solution is. It's amazing to me that the city keeps approving nearly every project that's proposed. There are more apartment complexes than you can count in the University area, which isn't a good thing. I don't have a problem with apartments in particular; I've lived in one near Harris and Mallard Creek for two years now. However, they keep building more and more apartments, even as there are plenty of vacancies in existing complexes. They also keep building grocery stores. Within a few miles of my apartment, there are four Harris Teeters, two Lowe's Foods, two Blooms, a Food Lion, and a Bi-Lo. Again, I don't have a problem with grocery stores. People need food. However, the market just seems slightly saturated around here. I wish there were smarter, better growth around here, along with more connectivity. It'd also be nice if sites were reused more. The Grand Promenade is a pretty good example. The old incinerator site that still shows up on the satellite maps is now the second phase of that shopping center, which -- for now at least -- features better parking than the first phase. It also features what will become an extension of McCullough Drive, which -- when complete -- will form a semicircle around the intersection of Harris and Tryon.

A gridded network off of McCullough seems like it would probably be pretty easy to do, and I would think that even the portion extending down to the 29/49 connector would be relatively easy to convert to, even if it did take time. The stretch of Tryon between the connector and Harris is full of development that doesn't connect. However, there's also still quite a bit of land available there, which should make connectivity relatively easy. I agree though that a grid would be hard to do east of Old Concord and Highway 49 because of the train tracks. My fiancee and I are actually moving to a house in a neighborhood near 485 over there, and we use McLean Road and Back Creek Church Road, both of which have railroad crossings, a lot. Considering that are some 50 trains per day that use that track, it's a pain having to rely upon those roads. The traffic on Back Creek Church can back up well over a mile, even without a freight train going by. The only solution is to build overpasses or underpasses, and those just aren't very viable solutions, especially for creating a gridded road network.

[monsoon]

Welcome to the forum ellifyno and the great writeup of the current state of UC.

You are correct about the part around the lake being different. This was the original construction in the area back when University City was being built as Charlotte and NC's first Urban Village. The design was such that people would live, work and shop in an area where cars would not be needed. The part around the east side of the lake was the only portion ever built. As you noted, they simply gave up and bowed over to the developer and property owner lobby instead of sticking to the plan.

And you can imagine the City's concern over this when they, in their wisdom, decided to locate a garbage incinerator right in the middle of the area. Forgetting he hazardous pollution it produced, imagine the effect of having hundreds of garbage trucks drive into that area every day. The only reason that incinerator is not operating today is because the city did not want to pay the money to add air scrubbers to bring it into EPA compliance.

Finally to add salt to the wound caused by bad city policy, all of the major roads there are built and controlled by the NCDOT. I probably don't need to explain the rest.

[DigitalSky]

Check out this University City neighborhood http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=...7&scene=1905461 it starts out gridlike at the front of the development then turns to sprawl...

[ellifyno]

And you can imagine the City's concern over this when they, in their wisdom, decided to locate a garbage incinerator right in the middle of the area. Forgetting he hazardous pollution it produced, imagine the effect of having hundreds of garbage trucks drive into that area every day. The only reason that incinerator is not operating today is because the city did not want to pay the money to add air scrubbers to bring it into EPA compliance.

The incinerator intrigued me when I first got here, and it still does today. By the time I got here, it sat abandoned, and looking sorely out of place next to the Grand Promenade. Thanks for some info on it. I thought it seemed like kind of an odd place for it, especially when you consider its relative proximity to Toby Creek and the fact that there's not much industrial-type development over here. If it were further down Harris, closer to Reames Road, it'd seem a little less out of place. That's one structure that I was actually happy to see disappear.

Is there any particular reason that the development around University City has been so bad compared to other parts of Charlotte, or is it simply that it's newer and there was more land available for developers to mess up on?

[ellifyno]

Check out this University City neighborhood http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=...7&scene=1905461 it starts out gridlike at the front of the development then turns to sprawl...

That's Newell Crossing. We actually briefly looked at townhouses in that neighborhood, which are in the gridded area up front. Instead, we opted to be in a neighborhood that sprawls more than that. Oops.

The apartments just to the northwest of that are a pain. There's only one entrance, and exiting is limited to right turns only (left turns are allowed into the complex). Even getting to the Target or Lowe's right behind them is a pain. The apartments across the street are currently the same way, with no connectivity to Old Concord or even Town Center Plaza. However, it appears as if they're planning on connecting to those to align with McLean Road at Old Concord.

[MZT]

When you look at the satellite shots, you really get a good sense of what a mess UC is. Big boxes, commercial strips, large dead office complexes, suburban residential, limited access to everywhere, dislocated undeveloped land. It looks like unzoned county development, instead of the city.

And then there's that reeeeally useful "City Blvd" that connects a few residential back roads with 85.

[tiblerbrit]

Haha, oh City Boulevard. I heard so many crazy rumors and speculation about where that road was supposed to be going. It took 3 years to build, is 4 lanes wide and doesn't do a thing. Sometimes I tried to use it when it first opened just because it was new, but it never saved any time.

[monsoon]

The history of City Boulevard is that it was supposed to fix the traffic weave that occurs when 29/49 joins with the traffic coming from I-85 north. It is a dangerous situation given the amount of traffic that goes through there now. So the NCDOT & city created what was known as the 49 to Graham St. Connector Projectin the mid 80s which would replace that weave and link to 85. It was supposed to begin on 49, go straight through University Volvo continue down close to where City Blvd is today, past Neal Rd through the former IBM property and finally terminate on the Graham St. extension which has not been built either.

The road was put on permanent hold by the NCDOT, re:unfunded, in 1992 or so when the city was forced to prioritize projects since there wasn't enough state money to build all that was requested. However when First Union built its huge CIC on Harris Blvd, it pulled some strings and the portion that we know today as City Blvd was built. First Union now Wachovia, wanted an additional exit from its complex so its employees would have a easier time getting out. My guess is that it is unlikely the state will build the rest of it.

It's been 20 years now since the road was first proposed.

[dubone]

City Blvd will help URP traffic and University City when it is finished from Tryon to Graham. But that is a long time coming unless Charlotte gets a funding source for transportation.

City Blvd, though, as it turned out has the same problem as the rest of University City. Every single thoroughfare that gets built is designed to carry a huge number of cars and as limited access as possible. It causes the area to have just a bunch of parkways and expressways, which are terrible for pedestrian traffic. When you combine those with the lack of connected small streets, the whole area is just a catastrophe of traffic. It is far worse than parts of the city with higher populations and jobs.