Charlotte fans of the grocery store Wegmans got some good news this week. The New York-based chain announced it’s building its first store in the city, in Ballantyne.
That exact scenario is something Tony Mecia, grocery store guru and also executive editor of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter, predicted would happen back in 2019.
He joins us now for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: So, you were right Tony. Why Ballantyne?
Tony Mecia: Marshall, I think if you look at Wegmans and you look at Ballantyne, you see it makes a lot of sense. Wegmans said this week that they're planning to build a 110,000-square-foot grocery store on North Community House Road in the Ballantyne Reimagined development. It's on the site of a couple of holes on the old golf course. It's supposed to open in 2026.
You know, it's a pretty big grocery store compared to other grocery stores. It's going to have 600 parking spaces, going to have about 400, 500 workers. You know, it's not like this area of town doesn't have grocery stores; there are a lot of other competing grocery stores.
But Wegmans thinks that it has an opportunity here. Ballantyne does have a higher-than-average income in the Charlotte area. There are also a lot of people from the North that live in Ballantyne, census data says, so it seems like a good fit.
Terry: Why does Wegmans have such a devoted following?
Mecia: That's a good question, Marshall. I will admit, I've never been to a Wegmans, so I don't fully understand it. But you certainly have people that are very enthusiastic about it. There's a local Facebook group called Bringing Wegmans to Charlotte that has more than 7,000 members.
I think a lot of it is you do have people from up North that are familiar with Wegmans and like it. You also have people who have been to a Wegmans and like the experience — the prepared foods, the fresh produce, the customer service, I think are some of the things that they all talk about. Every business has superfans. Other grocery stores have their fans, too. So I think that helps explain some of it.
Terry: Staying in south Charlotte for a moment, Charlotte City Council this week approved a huge new development project. But some residents there are not happy about it. What does the plan include, and why are some neighbors upset?
Mecia: This is a site that's about 125 acres. It's off of Providence Road, south of I-485. It's sort of in the Rea Farms area. 905 houses and a middle school — some residents didn't like the idea. They said it was just too many houses. It'll be too much traffic. They said there are already 15 rezonings in south Charlotte, accounting for 6,200 homes, and the traffic in the area is already bumper to bumper during rush hour. So it was a question about infrastructure.
Are the surrounding roads, and stormwater, is that going to be able to handle all these new people coming in? The City Council voted to go ahead with it, although some council members made some noises that maybe we need to take a look at all this growth and how we support that.
Terry: And let’s end this week in SouthPark, where an updated vision plan calls for $250 million worth of new infrastructure. Like what? And who would pay for it?
Mecia: So this is a plan put out by SouthPark Community Partners. It's a nonprofit that advocates for SouthPark using money from a special taxing district that was created a couple of years ago.
Really, these are just somewhere between a wish list and a blueprint. It's really kind of more thinking about what is possible. Some of the ideas in there include a performing arts center; it talks about reworking the streets, making them more pedestrian friendly, more bike friendly; to have the ability to do more events, possibly autonomous shuttles. Then also there's a plan that says maybe creating a bike path and a walkway underneath SouthPark Mall in the existing parking deck.
So really, it's about connecting SouthPark to itself a little bit better and giving people more places to go. The cost of $250 million is just an estimate. It would need to come from public and private sources. Again, it's really just sort of a bunch of ideas that might not come to fruition in their current form, but really, to get people thinking more about what's possible in SouthPark.
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