Uptown Charlotte appears to be returning almost to normal nearly four years since the pandemic sent many office workers home. Parking is harder to come by. Lunch lines are getting longer, and there's just a better vibe. For more, we turn to Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter.
Lisa Worf: Really, Tony, things are feeling more bustling in uptown these days. What do the numbers say?
Tony Mecia: Yeah, it's hard to know exactly just by looking, but there are researchers who study aggregated cellphone data that can see exactly how many people are going into downtowns across the country, and they can compare cities like Charlotte against other cities. And what the data is showing is that Charlotte is about at 75% of where it was pre-pandemic. Now we know that when the pandemic hit, most people who were working uptown started working from home. They've been gradually coming back. Some of the big employers, now they want their employees back three days a week. So for a while, that number was around, you know, 60%. But it has been creeping up and that's really, you know, playing out in a variety of ways — the lunch lines, you know, the waits to get into parking deck. Some of the parking decks we're told are getting full. So when people start complaining about parking in uptown, you know things are getting back close to normal.
Worf: So how does Charlotte compare to other cities?
Mecia: Well, it's better than some and not as good as others. I think Charlotte is fairly middle of the pack. I think it was something like 35th of cities in North America. Most of the ones that have the higher return rates tend to be in the South and the West. We're doing better than Raleigh, which I think was the worst in the South. But we're not doing as well as Atlanta. You know, we have a lot of larger employers who are not back five days a week typically. That is one hindrance that Charlotte has that maybe in other cities where it was a little more diversified, maybe they're doing a little bit better.
Worf: How are the big employers handling hybrid work schedules?
Mecia: Employers I've talked to say there's still a lot of flexibility. You know, the job market is still pretty tight. The unemployment rate is just a little bit over 3%. It's a pretty worker-friendly job market. So a lot of employers, they don't think that they can tell their employees, 'hey, we need you back five days a week.' So they're wanting to give that flexibility, some of the people we talked to said even people who are coming uptown a few days a week, and incidentally, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday tend to be the busy days uptown. Mondays and Fridays, just by coincidence, people seem to be working at home on those days. But even when they're at work, a lot of people, maybe they're coming in a little bit later. They're leaving a little bit earlier, so it's not quite like it was in 2019.
Worf: One of the pioneers of public relations in Charlotte died this month. Joe Epley. He made a name for himself nationally, and even internationally. How did he do that?
Mecia: Joe Epley started a public relations firm in Charlotte, Epley Associates, in 1968. And you know, that doesn't sound remarkable nowadays. But if you think back before I was born, of course, if you think back to the 1960s, public relations was really an emerging field at the time. There weren't big PR companies all over the place working with companies big and small. But Epley started advising political campaigns. He was an adviser to Mayor John Belk. He worked for a number of big companies that were well known to the predecessor to Atrium Health, Carolinas Healthcare System, worked for the developer of the Carowinds. He had a number of clients and really just started this field here. And really became known as a leader in his industry. You know, he retired about 20 years ago and passed away earlier this month, unexpectedly at 85.
Worf: And he even did some work promoting public relations in Russia just after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, I understand through one of your obituaries.
Mecia: You know, he just really wanted to teach public relations to the people of Russia who are going to lead it into the next generation. So, yeah, certainly forged a lot of those bonds, not just in Charlotte, not just nationally. But, you know, internationally, like you say.
Worf: As Charlotte City Council considers whether to reinstate criminal penalties for public urination and defecation, the Pineville Town Council just approved reinstating criminal penalties for aggressive panhandling. How come? And what defines 'aggressive' in this context?
Mecia: The police chief in Pineville urged council members to do that, said that it had become a little bit of a problem in Pineville that panhandlers were getting more aggressive. Now, panhandlers do have a First Amendment right to ask people for money. But if they're on public streets, medians, or private property, and they're hassling residents in an aggressive way, then the police will now have a tool where they can step in and do something about it, whereas before they didn't really have a whole lot of options, they said.
Support for WFAE's BizWorthy comes from Sharon View Federal Credit Union and our listeners.
