The rules for street vendors in Charlotte could be about to change. The current regulations date back to the 1980s, and City Council is considering changes as tensions rise among vendors, business owners and residents in some neighborhoods. For more on this, and other business stories, I’m joined now by Cristina Bolling, of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter, for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: Before we get to the possible changes, where are there tensions and why?
Cristina Bolling: So some neighborhoods in Charlotte do just have a lot of street vendors. And NoDa — especially there — street vending is a huge part of the fabric of that area. The owners of some brick-and-mortar businesses are complaining. They say that street vendors are causing their sidewalks to be crowded and are blocking their storefronts.
Right now, street vending is allowed in Charlotte, outside of what's called the Congested Business District — that really includes a lot of uptown. Within uptown, vendors can apply for permits to sell things. People say that tightening the rules on street vending would stifle local entrepreneur. But then on the other side, there's the struggle of these business owners who have brick-and-mortar stores, and they just want their customers to be able to walk down the street and get in their businesses without weaving around street vendors.
Terry: So what changes could be coming?
Bolling: For one thing, they're talking about expanding the permit zones that are in uptown right now to go farther outside of uptown. They're also talking about allowing neighborhoods to petition for that Congested Business District designation — so neighborhoods could kind of take the reins on trying to limit street vending in their areas. Council is gathering some public response this month, and they could vote on changes to the ordinance in June.
Terry: OK. On now to a new national report that found coworking space in Charlotte fell 9% in the first quarter this year. The steepest decline of any major market. Just a few years ago, it seemed like coworking was the hottest thing in post-pandemic real estate. What's behind the drop?
Bolling: During the pandemic, we were obviously all cooped up in our homes. Businesses were not fully open yet for employees to go back into the office. In a lot of cases, once they did open up, people didn't want to go back. And so this kind of hybrid way of living really has held for many years.
Now I think what's happening is many workers are either staying fully remote or they're going into their traditional offices. There's been a lot of return-to-work policies, so that kind of reduces the demand for these flexible workspaces.
Terry: Let's go to Pineville now, where the town's ban on door-to-door sales is facing some pushback. I don't know — that sounds like an OK ban to me. So who's pushing back?
Bolling: The town of Pineville bans for-profit companies from going door-to-door to solicit or sell. Nonprofits are OK — picture the cute third-grader that rings on your doorbell to sell you Girl Scout cookies.
Now, a Charlotte pest control company — called Moxie Pest Control — has hired lawyers and is talking about suing the town. So this week, the Pineville Town Council held a public hearing. Basically, the council is looking at four options: They could keep the ordinance where it is; they could ban all solicitation; they could lift all the bans on solicitation; or they could revise their ordinance to allow solicitations with a permit.
Terry: Finally, you report there's a new hot housing trend in Charlotte — painting them white. So what's driving that?
Bolling: A lot of existing brick homes are being painted white, and a lot of new homes are going up white as well. We talked to a color consultation expert for residential properties, and she said it really dates back to the HGTV Chip and Joanna Gaines trend — the modern farmhouse trend where white was a very popular color for homes on that show. And it sort of has become trendy for its clean lines, a uniform crisp look. Some folks say that it's not a great trend — in that it's sort of taken over too far, and neighborhoods are starting to look alike. And I spoke with a masonry expert who said painting brick is not even great for the brick. She said that there's concerns that brick is porous. It soaks up water from the earth, and that water doesn't have a place to leach out if one whole side is painted. So some concerns about it, but certainly lots of people that love the look and love the trend.
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