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Fifth Street Pedscape / Ivey's Building Retail Improvements


ScottCLT

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Yeah I saw that too, and was talking about it with a friend the other day. I wonder what the rent is in that space; Molly Mac's was a good tenant for that space - but you can't assume that you could sell enough $8 scotch every day to make costs work. I just don't think there are enough people with enough disposable income right now. So I wondered if they were just blind to that, or if the only way they could make their lease rate work was to sell $8 scotch.

Basil Thai is right across the street and I think they're doing fine business...

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Geez, this storefront has been a revolving door for 10+ years now. I would say that half a dozen or more failed restaurants is a sign that it should perhaps have a different use. Maybe a retail storefront instead of restaurant?

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Honestly about the only things that would work here would be a mega chain or one of the more successful Local Chains, 141 Main (is that the name?) or Big Daddys (Bad Daddys?)

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How about a great European bakery that has wonderful European breads, couissants, and other such items. It could serve European breakfasts like hard rolls, cheeses, couissants, pruchutto, muclix, ,and other specialties along with some usual dishes. For lunch,they would specialize with great bagette sandwiches. The wonderful aroma of fresh baked bread would be the draw. At night, it could be a great place for light dinners and wine, etc. Other than Dean and Deluca, I can't think of anything uptown in that category.

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How about a great European bakery that has wonderful European breads, couissants, and other such items. It could serve European breakfasts like hard rolls, cheeses, couissants, pruchutto, muclix, ,and other specialties along with some usual dishes. For lunch,they would specialize with great bagette sandwiches. The wonderful aroma of fresh baked bread would be the draw. At night, it could be a great place for light dinners and wine, etc. Other than Dean and Deluca, I can't think of anything uptown in that category.

That'd go out of business in a heartbeat, plus isn't there an Amelie's downtown too? It honestly needs to be a destination restaurant, local chain, or god awful chain for anything to survive there... There just isn't the residential capacity to support anything interesting :-(

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That'd go out of business in a heartbeat, plus isn't there an Amelie's downtown too? It honestly needs to be a destination restaurant, local chain, or god awful chain for anything to survive there... There just isn't the residential capacity to support anything interesting :-(

I tend to agree. It's a pretty good size space and COULD be well-used as a retail store but since that is so unlikely, a chain bar/restaurant is most likely, especially given its proximity to the 5th street bar strip. Not as cool as Molly's, but I think a Taco Mac would succeed there.

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^131 Main :) I'm not sure of the closest coffee shop, but why not a Starbucks if there's not one near by? That will draw traffic on it's own and may even spur other activity near by.

There are two Starbucks within as many blocks. One on Trade, one in Overstreet in BofA Plaza...

How about a great European bakery that has wonderful European breads, couissants, and other such items. It could serve European breakfasts like hard rolls, cheeses, couissants, pruchutto, muclix, ,and other specialties along with some usual dishes. For lunch,they would specialize with great bagette sandwiches. The wonderful aroma of fresh baked bread would be the draw. At night, it could be a great place for light dinners and wine, etc. Other than Dean and Deluca, I can't think of anything uptown in that category.

Fourth Ward Bread Co (on Graham St) is going to take care of most of that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Coyote Ugly anyone? Haha, I only went into Molly McPherson twice, and it was just not somewhere I really would go. The Amelies uptown is just a tiny thing in the Visit Charlotte tourism center, right? It would seem like maybe Amelies could try to do a real place, and snag after hours people walking from the clubs and morning coffee people at the banks.

The physical space, though, really needs work. Almost everyone avoids the sidewalk next to the Ivy's for the same reasons discussed ad nauseum in this thread. I walk through that stretch constantly and only walk that side of the street when I'm in a hurry and the other side is full. The entrance to this is that weird cut through inside the corner and it hasn't been upgraded in forever. Molly's had decent awnings but they really didn't catch the eye at all.

I think the only hope for this space is a chain (local or otherwise) that people will think about and go there. It is a shame that the Zink owners moved it to SouthPark, because it would have been the type of place that may have made the right upgrades inside and enough name recognition to draw people in.

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  • 4 months later...

Yes....all those windows will be replaced with windows that open all the way with seating areas directly behind them, but I don't believe there will be individual street-front doors, but instead a new recessed entryway into the whole building mid-block along 5th.

 

In the picture, that will be located where the guy is walking to the far right.

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Yeah I recall something about eliminating the parallel parking along this block of 5th street, and allocating the space toward enlarging the sidewalk.. Any idea if/when this will happen? It looks like there is about 40' clear width between Ivey's and the two older buildings in the middle of the block. Make 10' sidewalks in front of the Ivey's building along the entire length of the block plus 2 11' travel lanes, which leaves room for an 8' sidewalk in front of the two older buildings, and much wider in front of Fifth Third/IJL and Avenue.

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Reopening the bricked up side entrance from the original building has always been an obvious choice.   I like the idea of fully opening windows to allow seating to seem slightly al fresco, even though there is not really enough room to have that outside, even with a widened sidewalk.  It has always been a nice enhancement for the stretch of restaurants on College in the Heart building to have the opening windows like that. 

 

I know it is in the Center City Transportation plan to remove this parking and widen the sidewalk, but I had always remembered this to be under the reponsibility of the private owner to do with reimbursement from the city, or something like that.  That will be a big necessity in getting more pedestrians down to 5 Church and thinking of the other Ivey's restaurants and retailers.  5th Street has such a feeling of a side alleyway right now.  Far from enticing for pedestrians, so you don't stroll down it thinking about what restaurants you're walking past.  You would if it was a standard sidewalk and the restaurants had open windows overlooking the street.

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That is hilarious that they would literally brick up a sidewalk entrance. So Charlotte.

I'm confused. Building remodels happen all the time and entrances change as interior uses change. What does that have to do with Charlotte?

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I'm confused. Building remodels happen all the time and entrances change as interior uses change. What does that have to do with Charlotte?

I think that this opinion was that Charlotte has torn down or boarded up anything historical, but we wish we hadn't done. The building used to be a department store, with street front retail, then they converted to condos and some retail that was only accessible from the inside, not street front, and they bricked up that entrance. But now that the city is growing (for the past 20 or so years), street front retail is becoming more desirable again. I think we all would love to still have the buildings that once existed in Charlotte. It's just like we went backward for 30 or so years by tearing stuff down and then now we are moving forward. So re-opening a once closed entrance is like re-introducing the ideas that we shuttered years ago.

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It IS a stereotype of Charlotte as a whole to be irreverent with historical structures, either tearing them down or devaluing the historic aspects.   And yes, that general culture leads at some point in a century to turning an entrance into an unceremonious brick wall.

 

 

I am curious to see how this plays out, though.  They actually did end up removing the exterior brick all the way to the sidewalk in the window TO THE LEFT of that bricked up entrance.  But there is still a cinderblock wall behind that, but I could not tell if is something they just added in a quick way, or if that was there from a previous renovation or what not.  

 

It seemed plausible in my mind that they had turned the area behind the closed up old side entrance with some modern era equipment that is now expensive to move and that the new entrance will now be to the left of that.  But like I said, I am curious to see.  

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It's not fair to say Charlotte has demolished all of its past.  It was a small town at the turn of the 20th Century and didn't exist beyond Dilworth. Columbia, Winston, Wilmington, Birmingham, Atlanta, Charleston--all were much larger than Charlotte then, and subsequently have a greater inventory of early 20th Century buildings due to that fact.  Charlotte has always built on top of what was already occupied.  Case in point:  we had three city hall buildings in the period of 30 years.  NCNB built 212 Tryon on the site of a high rise that had been built just 30 years earlier.  

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