Charlotte Center City 2020 Vision Plan

[voyager12]

In the past few years Charleston has made a concerted effort to revert one way streets two way in congested parts of the peninsula. It has helped to slow the traffic.

Of course we are comparing two different urban worlds but generally one way streets can become racetracks.

Like so many others my biggest wish is to have substantial storefront retail. And I know the powers that be are working on it. Until that comes central Charlotte to me will continue to feel sterile and lack the intangible "buzz" one feels in other cities that have a walkable retail heart.

[krazeeboi]

And not just street-level retail...stuff that's actually open past 5pm and on weekends. The block where the Marriott Courtyard sits has retail spaces along Tryon, but that's one of the deadest stretches of the street at night and on the weekends because stuff is only open from 9-5. The only exception is probably Harry & Jeans.

[DMann]

And not just street-level retail...stuff that's actually open past 5pm and on weekends. The block where the Marriott Courtyard sits has retail spaces along Tryon, but that's one of the deadest stretches of the street at night and on the weekends because stuff is only open from 9-5. The only exception is probably Harry & Jeans.

Harry and Jeans has been closed for probably 8 months. This brings up a point about retail. It is not that we do not have any space for it, but retailers, moms and pops or chains, can't make the numbers work. Retailers will fight for a successful venue, ie SouthPark over EastLand. There are retail spots available in the downtown area, and if a retail surge were to develop, I would imagine that some of the cathedral bank branches we now have adorning street levels would scale back or move entirely to make room for growing retail. Consider South Tryon alone from the square to MLK Jr Blvd. There are 5 major bank branches that would make the bones for a vibrant condensed shopping district. Other street level businesses, eye clinics, etc, could also easily be relocated to feed a growing shopping district. Kinko's, on Tryon, come on!

Space exists, or could easily exist, the will doesn't.

[New Name]

Harry and Jeans has been closed for probably 8 months. This brings up a point about retail. It is not that we do not have any space for it, but retailers, moms and pops or chains, can't make the numbers work. Retailers will fight for a successful venue, ie SouthPark over EastLand. There are retail spots available in the downtown area, and if a retail surge were to develop, I would imagine that some of the cathedral bank branches we now have adorning street levels would scale back or move entirely to make room for growing retail. Consider South Tryon alone from the square to MLK Jr Blvd. There are 5 major bank branches that would make the bones for a vibrant condensed shopping district. Other street level businesses, eye clinics, etc, could also easily be relocated to feed a growing shopping district. Kinko's, on Tryon, come on!

Space exists, or could easily exist, the will doesn't.

There is no retail worthwhile in uptown to make people choose to go there over South Park or anywhere else. Nothing unique.

What's left? H&M? What can open in Uptown to make people CHOOSE a shopping experience there? And bring in other retails to feed from that CHOICE?

[krazeeboi]

Harry and Jeans has been closed for probably 8 months.

Wasn't sure if they were still open or not. Thanks for the info.

I would imagine that some of the cathedral bank branches we now have adorning street levels would scale back or move entirely to make room for growing retail.

You should see what some of these "cathedral bank branches" replaced--street-level retail spaces that brought a lot of pedestrian activity to the area.

[CLTNative]

Just a reminder: The first Center City 2020 Vision Plan Community Workshop is tomorrow night at the Charlotte Convention Center at 5:30 PM. There will be "Vision Stations" scattered throughout the opening reception where guests can provide their ideas through different avenues. If you cannot make the event, you can follow LIVE on CLTBlog.com and post your recommendations via Twitter: @CenterCity2020.

The website is also live: www.CenterCity2020.info

Should be a great event!

Edit: Added Links

2020_Community_Workshop_1_Sm.pdf

[New Name]

Is this going to be a collaborative event with discussions, or will people mostly be submitting ideas and concerns through the Stations?

Just a reminder: The first Center City 2020 Vision Plan Community Workshop is tomorrow night at the Charlotte Convention Center at 5:30 PM. There will be "Vision Stations" scattered throughout the opening reception where guests can provide their ideas through different avenues. If you cannot make the event, you can follow LIVE on CLTBlog.com and post your recommendations via Twitter: @CenterCity2020.

The website is also live: www.CenterCity2020.info

Should be a great event!

Edit: Added Links

[CLTNative]

Is this going to be a collaborative event with discussions, or will people mostly be submitting ideas and concerns through the Stations?

The bulk of the workshop will be a collaborative exercise after the opening reception. The team of consultants (MIG) will gather feedback from as many attendees as possible on a number of topics. The vision stations serve as a means to obtain suggestions and ideas from as many people as possible. The stations also provide feedback on topics that would not be as relevant in the workshop, for example: Most memorable place in Center City. There will definitely be discussions during the forum, this will be a pretty impressive production. I hope there are many from this forum in attendance. I have also taken note of this thread and the lengthy suggestions some have posted here to be added to the mix.

The image below is the result of the first steering committee meeting. It is a large image, but very detailed. I assume something like this will result from the workshop tomorrow.

EDIT: Link to tomorrow's agenda

[AlmaPinnix]

Whats the probability of tearing down I-277? Like the picture says..

[cltbwimob]

Whats the probability of tearing down I-277? Like the picture says..

I will not be there tomorrow, so will someone please tell the powers that be this is a misguided idea.

Interstate 277 is completely concurrent with other major highways meaning that there is no single portion of the freeway that is independent of other roads. US-74 comes in at the northeastern corner of the loop and runs to the south; NC-16 comes in at the southeastern corner and runs north. I-277 is just the name given to the loop as a whole, and there are no points anywhere along the route where I-277 is a stand-alone freeway. It's either I-277/US-74 (John Belk), I-277/NC-16 (Brookshire), or I-277/US-74/NC-16 (where all three are overlapped on the eastern portion of the beltway). As such, a complete annihilation of the freeway would mean that a 2-3 mile section of US-74 would be completely gone as well as a 2-3 mile section of NC-16. Both roads are major thoroughfares in Charlotte and could not simply just be split for the sake of "urbanity."

Since complete removal of the freeway is almost impossible (unless you relocate NC-16 and US-74) one might think that turning the freeway into a boulevard would be the solution. There are, however, two problems with turning the freeway into a boulevard. One is that Charlotte is consistently below standards when it comes to EPA measurements of air quality. In fact there was recently in article in CBJ that alluded to the threat of having federal funding for roads withdrawn if Charlotte did not improve air quality in the next few years. The worst problem for air quality is stop-and-go traffic. Vehicles are much less fuel efficient in stop-and-go traffic than freeway traffic (with the exception of rush hours) and more gas burned equals more smog. For this reason, the proposed removal of 277 is anti-environmental in nature. The second problem is traffic congestion. I know some people say that the grid in downtown Charlotte could move a high volume of traffic as efficiently as a freeway however that is simply not the case. That assumption only takes into account the sheer number of streets moving north/south and east/west. It does not take into account the 20-35 mph speed zones nor does it take into account traffic lights at nearly every intersection. Turning the freeway into a boulevard would be a traffic nightmare.

The third problem I see is cost. Some portions of the John Belk freeway look almost as if they are in a large trench. Bringing it up to street level would require thousands of truckloads of dirt along with other major logistical requirements. With the logistics comes large costs. It would be fiscally irresponsible for the city take on such a monumental task while projects that need to be carried out such as completing I-485 and the 2030 CATS plan go underfunded/unfunded.

Finally, the argument that I-277 is somehow a noose around Charlotte and is not allowing it to spread out is hard to believe. There is ample room for Charlotte to spread east and west within I-277/I-77 as well as north. If you look at photoshopped pictures of Charlotte

[southslider]

If keeping just Brookshire or Belk, the numbered routes (US-74, NC-16, NC-27) wouldn't necessarily have to be re-routed to new boulevards or Uptown Streets, rather, these routes could just follow whichever sections of I-277 were retained.

Besides numerous storefronts or ground-floor retail, the next thing sorely missing from Uptown is WATER. Charlotte lacks a riverfront, lakefront, or shoreline within its urban core. But Little Sugar Creek does sit underneath and alongside I-277. Remove this section of I-277, running from Stonewall/Kenilworth to 5th/6th/Independence, and you re-connect Uptown with Midtown. You also have the opportunity to create a new central waterfront connected via greenways and urban infill to CPCC, Independence Park and Freedom Park.

[New Name]

I won't be able to make it either (stuck at work).

If anyone wants to own this idea, please take it: Just because we may not get a (semi)"pro" baseball field in Uptown, doesn't mean that we couldn't still have a baseball field. Or any kind of multi-purpose athletic field. Center City is dominated by YOUNG people, many of whom would take advantage of a good multi-purpose athletic field. Not only would this be good for our heath as a society, but it would add a vibrancy to the city that is missing. Uptown development does "dress-up-dinner-and-business" very well - but lack with common casual livability.

Here's an angle: American cities don't need to be a shopping magnet any more. We're spending a lot of time thinking about how to breath vibrancy into Uptown, and most of our ideas come as result of dining and shopping options. Center City needs to stop fighting a war with suburban shopping malls (they will win). Instead, a city should be a SOCIETAL MAGNET - a common place, a meeting place, a public place - with many options for people to express themselves and enjoy the company of their friends and neighbors. MULTI-PURPOSE PARKS, public plazas, open air festivals, etc.

Someday I hope to see a Little League game on a field in center city on a Saturday morning. Where parents are not scared to bring their kids into the city and enjoy themselves in places other than Discovery Zone or Imagineon. Where families can explore and eat lunch at a sidewalk cafe. Take the LYNX home.

[Windsurfer]

Someday I hope to see a Little League game on a field in center city on a Saturday morning. Where parents are not scared to bring their kids into the city and enjoy themselves in places other than Discovery Zone or Imagineon. Where families can explore and eat lunch at a sidewalk cafe. Take the LYNX home.

Here, here. ~ perhaps even a skateboard park. You should see the crowds that the skatepark in Portland draws on the weekends.

[yorkconstruct]

The city should look into discovering alien technology that allows them to pick the entire city up and move it next to Lake Norman or somewhere by the Catawba River. This city needs a waterway. Anyone up for bankrupting the state and dredging a canal through Bank of America plaza?I agree with Southslider

[kermit]

This city needs a waterway.

Once upon a time the whitewater center was proposed to be in the center city....

[tozmervo]

More than once, I wondered if the person at the microphone was a UP contributor. Many of the ideas and comments brought to the forefront have been batted around here at one time or another.

From doing something with the N Tryon Railyards to slowing down the onslaught of Carolina's Medical to embracing and celebrating the growing cultural diversity in the area, a heck of a lot went onto "the big board."

One comment that came up several times was more retail opportunities and how to make that happen: including free market rental spaces and turning the Overstreet mall inside-out. (The latter, I think, could gain some traction - it had some applause from the audience.)

The whole thing was definitely set up to "kick off" the planning, just getting all the ideas and concerns out there. I was not terribly enthralled by the last segment where we ranked pretty pictures of things. I think that section could have been much improved by throwing in some images that could be more controversial or provocative. Rapid bus was the only item that seemed to generate significant differences of opinion.

[cltbwimob]

^ Rapid bus? Is that the same as BRT?

I wasn't there so I don't know.

[tozmervo]

Busses in general seemed to get a lot of flack, although there were some folks that were clearly annoyed about that fact. The picture I reference above looked like a BRT-model bus on a modern European residential street (in its own lane, of course).

[HopHead]

I like The Escapists suggestion of a little league field or a set of fields where people can play amateur sports. I'd love to see Pearl Street park (on a slightly larger scale) plopped down somewhere in uptown. I think that would be fantastic. You could then have some lowrise retail and cafe type places around it. Would make for a perfect Saturday morning and afternoon...

[krazeeboi]

Busses in general seemed to get a lot of flack, although there were some folks that were clearly annoyed about that fact. The picture I reference above looked like a BRT-model bus on a modern European residential street (in its own lane, of course).

BRT could work in a limited capacity here along a few key corridors, but the only thing is that it doesn't have a history of generating TOD like rail-based transit. So it would mainly be the for the purpose of getting people from point A to point B as fast as possible; it probably wouldn't serve as any sort of catalyst for urbanization.

[15895]

Queen Charlotte, Queen Charlotte, Queen Charlotte, market this dang city as the Queen city. God, I would just do anything to see another statue like the statue at the airport of Queen Charlotte in uptown but bigger and very prominent. That would be amazing. I just think Charlotte could do a little bit better in marketing itself as the queen city.

[cltbwimob]

On the website for the 2020 plan, I found the "Rate the Pictures" survey that Tozmervo referred to in a post. Here is the link to the page that will take you to the survey. Before rating pictures, you must first answer 3 or 4 questions. After that comes the fun part.

[Urbanity]

On the website for the 2020 plan, I found the "Rate the Pictures" survey that Tozmervo referred to in a post. Here is the link to the page that will take you to the survey. Before rating pictures, you must first answer 3 or 4 questions. After that comes the fun part.

Thanks for posting that. I took the survey myself. For the questions part, among the items that I listed in wanting to see more street facing retail (including an central uptown ABC liquor already), more small black box/off & off-off Broadway type theaters, Charlotte versions of a NYC Brooklyn brownstone neighborhoods, more mom and pop type restaurants, more adult orientated nightlife options (cabarets, jazz clubs, blues clubs), and a grand urban park.

[AuLukey]

I really like a lot of the ideas presented on that site, one that deserves a look to help solve the 277 problem is the mentioning of underside-freeway development. I just came back from Paris a few weeks ago where practically every rail line and large roadway had open space for parking/bike racks, news racks, etc underneath with plenty of room for pedestrian traffic. It really made hopping through the streets much more convenient. The same can be said for a lot of areas in Sydney and NYC as well. I wonder what a cost comparison of burying 277 vs creating ample room underneath that same portion of highway would look like.

[southslider]

^But where 277 sits higher than its surroundings, it sits on fill, having elevated structures only where bridging over streets. The bridge over West Morehead is about the longest, but much shorter than the survey example. And virtually all the 277 bridges create spaces lacking natural light.