The door has now been slammed on door-to-door sales in the town of Pineville. In a 3-2 vote last month, the town council ended an ordinance allowing only some solicitations, which had come under legal scrutiny. For more on this, and other business stories, I’m joined now by Tony Mecia, of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter, for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: So, what was the old policy? And, what was the controversy?
Tony Mecia: Yeah so, Marshall, in the town of Pineville, it had been the case that people could go door to door if they were with a nonprofit or a church, like Girl Scouts, or soliciting for a good cause. But there was a pest control company called Moxie Pest Control that said, Hey, wait a minute. That's not really fair — if you allow for some people, you should allow it for everybody. So instead, what the town council did is they decided to end it for everybody in the town of Pineville.
Terry: What door-to-door policies are in place in other cities and towns in Mecklenburg County?
Mecia: Well, it's a little bit more relaxed in most other cities and towns. Like in Charlotte, for example, there are regulations. You can go door to door, but only during certain hours. You can't do it late at night, but it is permitted in other places. So you will see people occasionally showing up at your door in Charlotte, but now that's not legal in Pineville.
Terry: OK. Let's talk now about a debate that's been playing out in The Ledger over the past week. It's between Charlotte City Council and one of the city's best known developers. What's it all about?
Mecia: Well, Marshall, there was a vote at the Charlotte City Council last week on the issue of whether to require airport contractors to pay a certain minimum wage. Some people on the City Council wanted to study that a little bit more. Others said, well, no, we can't really do that at the airport — it might not be legal.
At The Ledger, we heard from Johnny Harris, who is a prominent developer in town. He's the president of Quail Hollow Club, help bring the PGA Tour here, well-known businessman. He wrote in a column for us that he thinks that vote is indicative of a city council, that he said is "increasingly driven by performative activism," that some national trends are kind of playing out in front of the City Council as opposed to the old way of sort of settling disagreements privately.
We then heard from City Council member Victoria Watlington. She said, in 2025 that's not the way we should do things. We should be airing our grievances and our disagreements publicly, because that's more transparent and it's more honest. So a little bit of a debate in a growing city over sort of how we solve some of our problems.
Terry: On to some restaurant news now. It appears there could be some changes at one of Charlotte's most beloved restaurants. What's going on at Alexander Michael's?
Mecia: Yeah, The Ledger reported last week that there's a lawsuit between the landlord of Alexander Michael's — this is a restaurant in Fourth Ward uptown that's been there since the early '80s — that the landlord is suing the owner of Alexander Michael's, Steve Casner. (The lawsuit) alleges that Casner misled the landlord about terms of his lease. It came out in the course of that lawsuit that Alexander Michael's is under contract to sell to a different owner.
Now, Casner later told Axios Charlotte that he's just considering a sale. He is 71. He's been doing it for a long time. So there could be some ownership changes there. And then, if that happens, according to the lawsuit, it's also possible that the city could force them to do some renovations. So, potentially some changes in the works at Alexander Michael's, but nothing imminent right now.
Terry: Let's end this week on an update to a story we talked about in May. The hot new trend of painting brick houses white. You report that trend now is growing to more than just houses, right?
Mecia: Yes. I mean, we might've seen this in different residential neighborhoods, but now [at] the new Crate & Barrel in SouthPark at the Morrocroft Village shopping center. I drove by there the other day. It has now been painted white. It was 1990s red brick and now has a white facade. So it's spreading all over.
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson and Associates.
