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Will EpiCentre be more successful than CityFair?


monsoon

Will Epicenter be more successful than Cityfare?  

62 members have voted

  1. 1. Will Epicenter be more successful than Cityfare?

    • No - Same Idea, Same Results
      4
    • Yes - Concept will work now
      51
    • What was Cityfare?
      7


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I think that the Hearst Tower we have today is much more pedestrian friendly than City Fair ever was. When you walk by the Hearst Tower on College St in good weather it is quite common to see the windows open at Fuel, Pita Pitt, Blue, and the Chinese Place.... that type of interactivity with the pedestrians on the sidewalk where you hear peoples conversations and can smell their food never existed with City Fare. Everything at City Fare was behind a large glass wall that didn't open up to the outside world.

City Fair had the perception that it was on the edge and not the easiest place to get to without a Tryon St entrance or a good Overstreet Mall connection. The EpiCentre on the otherhand has the perception of being in the middle of it all and will have the Overstreet Mall Connection as well as the Lynx Blue Line.

Hopefully the windows at EpiCenter will be designed in the same way as the Hearst Tower so that people walking by on the street will be able to hear and smell what is going on inside the building. That type of interactivity will cause pedestrians to stop and take notice of the EpiCentre and maybe go into it to check it out. Whereas if everything were contained behind a glass wall then most people will just walk by and not pay it any attention.

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In addition to the closing of Ivey's Dept. Store and the Belk Dept. Store, the subsequent demo of the massive 5 story Belk store, this all happened at about the same time all of Tryon Street was torn up and actually was a wide dirt road as it was transformed into a "Transit Mall" with the current bus shelters we see today, and changed from a 6 lane street with parking on either side of Tryon to a new 4 lane Tryon with much wider, pavement-style sidewalks, with new utilities underground and new lighting. Also, the Independence Center building on the northwest side of "the Square" was being built, with no pedestrian traffic on that block due to the 18 months or so of construction.

There were actually some temporary plank sidewalks used on Tryon during this transformation.

Without the wider Tryon sidewalks, lunch and rush hour pedestrian traffic of 2008 Charlotte would be in gridlock, like I-485.

I remember CityFair had large roll-up garage-like doors that could open during nice weather, and the lunch crowd loved the outdoor space for eating. I don't think anyone could have foreseen the closing of the Belk store, so I don't blame the city. Just terrible timing! It's worked out google-fold better than any '80's observer could ever have imagined. I think EpiCentre will be a slam dunk. I wish the theatres could include a digital 3-D IMAX, similar to what's at the Palms in Vegas. And, I wish the bowling alley would have been a Lucky Strike, also like what's in Vegas. I hope the Jumbo-tron and the retail gives the place a 24 hour a day, Times Square like look. I hope Ghazi goes for some flash and excitement (some LED lighting) and color, not just a bunch of red neon (the cheapest color).

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^Indeed. I actually liked what they did with CityFare in terms of how nice it was there during accommodating weather. The design would pull people in from the streets. I could see this design retrofitted on certain skyscrapers in downtown to turn their boring elevator lobbies into nice retail space that would help to transform downtown. The most likely candidates for this would be the old NCNB tower at Trade & Tryon and the old Wachovia building down on S. Tryon.

Most here don't realize that Tryon used to be 6 lanes with much narrower sidewalks. It was the work done in the mid 80s that transformed it into the much more pedestrian friendly place that it is today. Downtown was torn up for more than a year while they made this transformation. The trees, bush shelters, etc were all installed around 1984 or so.

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I remember CityFair well. The food court was packed at lunchtime. I think the stores upstairs didn't work well in part because malls over 2 stories have trouble getting foot traffic on the upper levels; even suburban malls have that problem, and the stores in the corridor leading to the food court (from the skywalk leading to Founders Hall) weren't the "destination retail" that uptown would need to compete with suburban malls. I think the EpiCentre will do very well because it seems to be mostly entertainment- and dining-based, and those concepts do fine in downtowns. To me, EpiCentre and CityFair are sort of apples vs. oranges; CityFair had a larger retail component.

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It seemed that what doomed CityFair really was the fact that BankofAmerica (then NationsBank) wanted to build an expensive office tower there. That left stuck in a past period and a product of its own time, which was not as successful as we think of now. That is, it was busy for lunch, as there were downtown workers, but not busy after work, as at the time downtown had few middle class residents or visitors spending money.

I don't have personal experience with it, though, so that maybe over simplified.

However, I think for the most part, the retail part of Epicentre is very possible what City Fair might have become if it had been able to survive to the present time. However, Epicentre will benefit significantly by being able to plan a huge residential tower and decent sized hotel right above it. It is also designed after many (not all) of the lessons have been learned from that era that was a failure for urban retail in this city. They made almost all the retail in EpiCentre accessible from outdoor space, allowing more individualized opening and closing times and making it more visible and memorable to passers by. Those components will make it more successful, but it will still be mostly subject to the demands of the current restaurant and small retail market downtown, just as City Fair would have been if it were still here. Luckily, the current market is much healthier than has been true for about a generation, due to resurgence of people visiting and staying after hours and the ever growing residential base.

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I think this project will have great success and will be even more popular and successful in a couple of years when all the construction in and around it is complete. Like previous posters have said, Charlotte is so much more different now than when CityFair was here a long time ago.

I'm looking forward to visiting this complex the next time I'm in Charlotte to visit. :D

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