Misc. Uptown Projects/News

[Spartan]

On 2/28/2019 at 9:52 AM, Matthew.Brendan said:

Two questions:

1) Who owns the building with Chima on the ground floor? It looks like the upper floors have been in some sort of renovation stage for a loooong time now, with no real progress.

2) Ruths Chris days must be numbered as available "prime" S. Tryon real estate dwindles. How long before this single story structure is demo'd for a nice tall infill tower? (Hotel? Residential? Combo? Might be a bit small for traditional office). It has a very "nice" address as well - 222 S. Tryon 

I always heard that Ruth's Chris building was built at the same time as the adjacent condos in order to protect their view. Not sure of the ownership situation... but it would seem like a good place for a small mid-rise building... aside from messing up the views from the adjacent buildings!

On 2/28/2019 at 1:36 PM, UrbanCharlotte said:

 

 

If this is the final rendering, the ground floor on this is complete garbage...

16 hours ago, DMann said:

I was strolling through  the Mech ROD and was surprised to find that Booth Gardens, sitting in the center of the Fourth Ward, was sold by the Salvation Army last March to BG Apartments Investors LLC.  Anyone have any scoop on why and what might be up there?

They painted it, and did some other minor renovations but that's about it. I wish someone would redesign the site and build something more attractive there without displacing the residents. 

[KJHburg]

^^^ I do believe that is right about the Ruth Chris's steakhouse.  the building is owned by Three Deuces LLC whoever that is.  

[GeauxCLT]

Random question that I ponder daily as my view is of 2 Wells Fargo...help from any architect/construction gurus would be appreciated...what are this random set of vented windows with what appears to be a larger ceiling height midway up the building for? Is the mechanical and A/C in the middle of the building and not on the roof? 

 

Thanks and and sorry this is an off topic non- development post. 

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, GeauxCLT said:

Random question that I ponder daily as my view is of 2 Wells Fargo...help from any architect/construction gurus would be appreciated...what are this random set of vented windows with what appears to be a larger ceiling height midway up the building for? Is the mechanical and A/C in the middle of the building and not on the roof? 

 

Thanks and and sorry this is an off topic non- development post. 

Could be a floor dedicated to for a server room, trading floor stuff (not sure if this building has a trading floor or  not)

[tozmervo]

It's mechanical equipment. If you start looking at other tall buildings you'll usually find something similar. Sometimes its preferable to keep equipment spread out, or they need roof/basement for other things, etc.

[navigator319]

More like Misc Charlotte news, but none the less all great news for us.

https://www.mecknc.gov/CountyManagersOffice/Documents/2019 Community Pulse Report.pdf

[Boricua]

7 hours ago, GeauxCLT said:

Random question that I ponder daily as my view is of 2 Wells Fargo...help from any architect/construction gurus would be appreciated...what are this random set of vented windows with what appears to be a larger ceiling height midway up the building for? Is the mechanical and A/C in the middle of the building and not on the roof? 

 

Thanks and and sorry this is an off topic non- development post. 

Another random question. Why isn't this building lit a night? Was it ever lit? Can't remember.

[Bikeguy]

6 minutes ago, navigator319 said:

More like Misc Charlotte news, but none the less all great news for us.

https://www.mecknc.gov/CountyManagersOffice/Documents/2019 Community Pulse Report.pdf

Unless you want to walk to a neighborhood park. ....   

 

Charlotte has often fared poorly in rankings of parks, greenways and accessibility of outdoor spaces compared with its peer communities. Last year, the Trust for Public Land ranked Charlotte dead last out of 97 cities it studied for access to parks. Only 28 percent of residents live within a 10-minute walk to a park, the nonprofit said.

[CTiger]

On 3/5/2019 at 10:26 PM, Spartan said:

If this is the final rendering, the ground floor on this is complete garbage...

While I agree, I have to imagine that there are serious limitations on what can go in the ground floor of a police station.  Retail would pose too much of a security threat and I would think that they try to keep the general public at arms length.  

[Scribe]

18 hours ago, Bikeguy said:

Trust for Public Land ranked Charlotte dead last out of 97 cities

Trust for Public Land is complete horse $#$%^.

They list Eastover/Mayers Park as a "very high need" - don't account for any of the park  amenities that each neighborhood provides for their residents.

Charlotte has TWICE as much parkland as Seattle -- but most of our parks are HUGE (compared to Seattle)

Charlotte:  Median park size: 18.0 acres

Seattle:        Median park size: 2.4 acres

We have a whole thread dedicated to it:

 

[Bikeguy]

5 hours ago, Scribe said:

Trust for Public Land is complete horse $#$%^.

They list Eastover/Mayers Park as a "very high need" - don't account for any of the park  amenities that each neighborhood provides for their residents.

Charlotte has TWICE as much parkland as Seattle -- but most of our parks are HUGE (compared to Seattle)

Charlotte:  Median park size: 18.0 acres

Seattle:        Median park size: 2.4 acres

We have a whole thread dedicated to it:

 

Read my comment.  "Unless you want to walk to a neighborhood park".   I'm well aware of the metrics that the Trust uses. Yes we have huge parks, but very few of our citizens can walk to them.   

[Scribe]

8 minutes ago, Bikeguy said:

Read my comment.  "Unless you want to walk to a neighborhood park". 

Then you must have not read the linked thread, where it talks about the ignored neighborhood amenities that are available to the people that are living in that neighborhood, and < 10 minutes away for all residents, but is intentionally ignored in ParkScore because it is not "public".

[Brendv7]

6 hours ago, Scribe said:

Then you must have not read the linked thread, where it talks about the ignored neighborhood amenities that are available to the people that are living in that neighborhood, and < 10 minutes away for all residents, but is intentionally ignored in ParkScore because it is not "public".

If it is not public, then why would it be counted? If a bunch of families from West Charlotte showed up to an HOA maintained green space in South Charlotte, how long until Barbara and Janet are calling the police? If the public at large can’t use it and it is being paid for by a private entity who can limit access to it, it’s not a public park. Good for the people who live there no doubt, but it’s not the same.

[j-man]

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2019/03/07/the-future-of-uptown-charlottes-north-tryon.html

Edited March 8, 2019 by j-man

[tozmervo]

9 hours ago, Brendv7 said:

If it is not public, then why would it be counted? If a bunch of families from West Charlotte showed up to an HOA maintained green space in South Charlotte, how long until Barbara and Janet are calling the police? If the public at large can’t use it and it is being paid for by a private entity who can limit access to it, it’s not a public park. Good for the people who live there no doubt, but it’s not the same.

Based on the criteria, closeness to a park is what they are evaluating. If an HOA has a neighborhood park that the entire neighborhood has access to, then per their criteria it should count for that neighborhood.

[sakami]

9 hours ago, Brendv7 said:

If it is not public, then why would it be counted? If a bunch of families from West Charlotte showed up to an HOA maintained green space in South Charlotte, how long until Barbara and Janet are calling the police? If the public at large can’t use it and it is being paid for by a private entity who can limit access to it, it’s not a public park. Good for the people who live there no doubt, but it’s not the same.

This exactly. I have seen many of these little green areas in South Charlotte areas with signs that say “For residents of XXX only”. 

And there are things like Eastover Elementary in the Eastover neighborhood but those playgrounds are essentially closed between the hours of 7:45-3:15. 

[Brendv7]

1 hour ago, tozmervo said:

Based on the criteria, closeness to a park is what they are evaluating. If an HOA has a neighborhood park that the entire neighborhood has access to, then per their criteria it should count for that neighborhood.

I think they are evaluating closeness to a public park. Not closeness to privately maintained green space that the public may be denied access to. I don’t see why this distinction is hard to grasp. If BOA and Wells created their own bus system just for their employees like the tech companies did, you don’t get to count that as public transportation. It just illustrates the degradation of the idea of a community and that services and benefits should be enjoyed by the public, not little suburban enclaves. 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Brendv7

[tozmervo]

49 minutes ago, Brendv7 said:

I think they are evaluating closeness to a public park. Not closeness to privately maintained green space that the public may be denied access to. I don’t see why this distinction is hard to grasp. If BOA and Wells created their own bus system just for their employees like the tech companies did, you don’t get to count that as public transportation. It just illustrates the degradation of the idea of a community and that services and benefits should be enjoyed by the public, not little suburban enclaves. 

I think we're discussing two sides of the same coin. The criteria the trust uses is trash. The thinking on the rating is that, without a park within X minutes, a user has NO access to parks at all, regardless of where. My argument is that if they continue to use that assumption (they shouldn't), then private parks should matter. That would include places like The Green in uptown. God knows there are neighborhoods that lack quality green space in Charlotte, but their criteria is useless for actually addressing that on a "true need" basis.

 

[Scribe]

On 3/8/2019 at 5:13 AM, Brendv7 said:

If it is not public, then why would it be counted?

Who do you think lives in a neighborhood that is within the city limits that the ParkScore is evaluating?

The public of that city! Basically, the only way to make that score better for the Trust to be "happy" is to spend a crapton more taxpayer money.  If they cared about actual citizen access to park amenities, the neighborhood park amenities would be counted.

 

On 3/8/2019 at 2:22 PM, tozmervo said:

If a bunch of families from West Charlotte showed up to an HOA maintained green space in South Charlotte

And you misunderstand the ParkScore, it has to be within 10 minute walk of where that person lives. Hence why the neighborhood amenities (if counted) would flip our score to be in the top ~20

 

If a resident is driving to get to a park, then west Charlotte residents (like the rest of the Charlotte residents) can drive to any of the MegaParks™ i.e. Reedy Creek, McDowell Nature Preserve, Latta Plantation, etc.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Scribe

[Brendv7]

Beyond scoring pedant points or some notion of defending Charlotte’s honor against some “unfair” study methodology, I don’t see how one can argue with the broader point that I’m making that counting private green space maintained by HOAs as public park space would yes inflate our score, but at the expense of letting the City off the hook from actually having to feel the pressure and follow through on it’s broken promises regarding greenways and park space (especially in low income areas that don’t have HOA maintained green space and are the first to get shafted by funding shortfalls in the greenway for instance). 

[Scribe]

The only pendant score is the ParkScore! They claim to measure peoples access to park space, but completely ignore the park space that is right next to a large chunk of the population with HOA maintained amenities.

It is not about inflating anyone's score, it's about solving an actual problem, not making up a problem just so you can throw around some number and demand funding.  If the score actually included HOA amenities, that map would look drastically different and point out the actual problem areas that you are talking about. Allow the city to focus its efforts on those areas.

Instead we have a map that shows that one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the entire city is in "Very High Need" of a park -- talk about a broken system.

[tozmervo]

4 hours ago, Brendv7 said:

Beyond scoring pedant points or some notion of defending Charlotte’s honor against some “unfair” study methodology, I don’t see how one can argue with the broader point that I’m making that counting private green space maintained by HOAs as public park space would yes inflate our score, but at the expense of letting the City off the hook from actually having to feel the pressure and follow through on it’s broken promises regarding greenways and park space (especially in low income areas that don’t have HOA maintained green space and are the first to get shafted by funding shortfalls in the greenway for instance). 

In part it's because I don't want the city county to prioritize putting parks in neighborhoods that don't actually need them just to satisfy bad study methodology. If a well-to-do neighborhood HOA is maintaining it's own park, then I think that gives the county fair reason to focus on locating publicly maintained parks in areas that can't privately develop and maintain them. 

[kermit]

‘Word on the street’ is that Johnson and Wales U is struggling with declining enrollments.

There is ‘some’ risk of shutdown according to generally reliable sources.

 

Edited March 13, 2019 by kermit

[TheOneRJ]

6 minutes ago, kermit said:

‘Word on the street’ is that Johnson and Wales U is struggling with declining enrollments.

There is ‘some’ risk of shutdown according to generally reliable sources.

 

Unlikely. Johnson & Wales’ enrollment numbers have been stagnant for a while, but the numbers are pretty much on par for the size of the Charlotte campus and its offerings. 

[Spartan]

On 3/10/2019 at 2:54 PM, Scribe said:

The only pendant score is the ParkScore! They claim to measure peoples access to park space, but completely ignore the park space that is right next to a large chunk of the population with HOA maintained amenities.

It is not about inflating anyone's score, it's about solving an actual problem, not making up a problem just so you can throw around some number and demand funding.  If the score actually included HOA amenities, that map would look drastically different and point out the actual problem areas that you are talking about. Allow the city to focus its efforts on those areas.

Instead we have a map that shows that one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the entire city is in "Very High Need" of a park -- talk about a broken system.

I agree it's not about the score specifically. It's about the County's approach to park construction. They treat them like another misc. land use along a highway. They are all primarily drive-to destinations. Part of it, though, has to do with how neighborhoods get constructed. We don't have neighborhoods expanded as extensions of the adjacent one anymore. They all have to be exclusive sounding enclaves for some reason. Although the city requires street connections, developers do everything they can to get out of those where possible.

But think about all the parks in neighborhoods... Latta, North Charlotte, Independence, etc. These were all built in conjunction with unbuildable space in neighborhoods, and they were set up that way from the beginning. The best cities have pre-planned parks in the center of neighborhoods. We don't have that, and the only way to have that in a way that is meaningful would be to buy land in the middle of neighborhoods, which would mean buying out some people's houses to build a park.