It’s the end of an era. An iconic piece of art that has helped illuminate uptown Charlotte for almost three decades will soon come down. The 40-foot-by-40-foot light sculpture called Quadrille was installed on the side of the former Duke Energy building across from Bank of America Stadium in 1996. For more, we turn now to Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: So I remember Quadrille from when I was a kid. It was a big deal — really said “Charlotte,” there in the 1990s. So why is Quadrille coming down?
Tony Mecia: Marshall, times are changing. As with a lot of things, it has to do with development. This is a 40-foot-by-40-foot light sculpture, you know, that's 1,600 square feet. That's bigger than a lot of apartments, a lot of bungalow houses. The land that it's on is being redeveloped. MRP Realty bought the site last year. It's turning the building into 450 apartments. They don't have a need for a large light sculpture. So Duke is looking for somewhere else to put it.
Terry: This reminds me of when the JFG coffee sign was taken down more than a decade ago and moved to a new location. Is that what's going to happen with this?
Mecia: It's a little bit up in the air. We don't know exactly what's going to happen with this piece of artwork. It is 15,000 pounds and so it's going to take some doing, you know, to move a 7-ton piece of artwork. There is some cost to operate it as well. Duke has looked at a number of different options. It's sort of putting the call out saying, ‘Hey, if you have any ideas, let us know.’ So far, nothing has materialized.
The plan now is for a flatbed truck to take it to Maidon, 35 miles northwest of Charlotte, where Duke has a facility, and to store it there until they can kind of figure out what to do with it.
Terry: OK. Well, let's move on to the busy holiday travel season that we'll be here in just a few weeks. You report it appears that Charlotte Douglas will have finished three major projects by Thanksgiving. What are they?
Mecia: Everybody's favorite topic construction at the airport — but they are making some tangible progress. The first one, the unveiling of Queen Charlotte. They did this last week. It's a 15-foot-high statue that's that was previously in a parking lot. But now she's been moved into the lobby.
And then the second one is the expanded lobby. This is supposed to open in the next few weeks. They're calling it the Queens Court. It will have a restaurant before going through security, high-ceiling, expanded space.
And the third part of that is a new security checkpoint that they're calling Checkpoint 1. They're going to start designating the checkpoints with numbers instead of letters, as they currently do. That's supposed to be open by the end of the month. It's going to have some high-capacity screening lanes where, you know, your bag — if it has something objectionable in it, will go into its own separate lane where it can then be inspected, as opposed to the old way of just putting them all through one conveyor belt. So a number of things underway at Charlotte Douglas.
Terry: And what's the expectation as far as the number of passengers go? Is the post-pandemic travel boom that we've seen this summer expected to continue?
Mecia: Airport officials said last week that they think that 2023 passenger numbers are going to surpass 2019, and it's going to be the busiest year for travel through Charlotte that Charlotte's ever had. In 2019, they had 50.2 million passengers. Through August, those numbers are up 5% this year over 2019. So they're seeing that continue. And they're expecting it will remain a pretty busy year.
Terry: Finally, there's an election coming up in about two weeks and $2.5 billion in school bonds will be on the ballot. But you report CMS isn't releasing its latest enrollment figures, which it usually does in mid-October. What's up with that?
Mecia: Yeah, usually every year CMS and other school districts across the state release what they call their "20th-day numbers," which as it sounds the enrollment in the schools on the 20th day of school, which was in September. So far they haven't released those. The Ledger has been asking for them. I know WFAE's Ann Doss Helms has been asking for them. The latest is they say they should come out in early November, which would be later than usual and potentially after the bond vote. I mean, we don't know what these enrollment numbers will show, but if the numbers are down or flat, a headline to that effect might not be helpful to the pro-bond campaign. So we're continuing to ask for those numbers, and I know others are too, and hope to see them soon.
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