City Council this week approved a slew of development projects in south Charlotte. They include a new elementary school across from Ardrey Kell High with apartments and townhomes on the same site. Some residents are not happy about the plan.
“Some neighbors were raising eyebrows about that,” the Charlotte Ledger business newsletter’s Tony Mecia told WFAE’s Marshall Terry on this week’s BizWorthy. “They say the traffic there across from Ardrey Kell is already really bad, and adding a school and 350 housing units right there was just going to make the traffic worse.”
Mecia notes the developer plans to put in affordable housing, such as apartments, with the idea that teachers from the school might live there.
Only one member of Charlotte City Council — Republican Ed Driggs, who represents the area in question — was opposed to the project. And his opposition sparked a comparison to none other than the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown.
“Kind of unusual — sort of a lighter moment at the council meeting,” Mecia said, describing how Driggs worked with the developer to reduce the height, get the number of apartments lowered and add open space to the project. “Even though everybody else on the City Council voted for it, Driggs voted against it. He said it was still too many units. That brought a lot of council members saying, ‘Well, Ed Driggs did some great work on this. We appreciate his work. He worked hard. Council member Greg Phipps said, ‘They say James Brown was the hardest working man in show business, but I think it was Mr. Driggs working the phones on this.
“I don’t know that Ed Driggs has ever been compared to James Brown before, and I certainly don’t know whether he has the same dance moves.”
You can listen to the full BizWorthy conversation above. Here’s a quick look at what else Mecia and Terry covered this week.
- There’s a new office tower going up in Charlotte’s SouthPark neighborhood.
- Ingersoll Rand is leaving its longtime home in Davidson and searching for a new spot for its global headquarters.
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