We’re just over a week into the government shutdown with no end in sight. Officials with Mecklenburg County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have said so far the impacts of have been minimal on their organizations. But what about businesses in Charlotte? To talk more about it and other business news of the week, Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment, BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: What are you hearing, Tony, about the shutdown’s impact so far? Is it good news or bad news for Charlotte?
Tony Mecia: I think if there's good news about it, it's as far as the direct effect to Charlotte, it's worse in other areas than it is in Charlotte. Numbers show that federal employment in the Charlotte region is less than 1%. That's lower than the state average. The effects so far have mostly been kind of theoretical.
Any organizations that depend on grants, like nonprofits, universities, those could eventually see some trouble. They're saying they're not really seeing a whole lot right now. Are there things going on at the airport? Are there big delays because of air traffic controllers or security? Not really seen any of that yet. It's not that there's no impact, but I think a lot of these impacts are felt in other places where there's more federal employees and more at stake.
Terry: Over to Matthews now, where a developer this week withdrew plans for a controversial data center. What made it controversial and why the decision to pull the plug on it?
Mecia: Yes, there were plans for a data center on 123 acres in Matthews near the intersection of John Street and Interstate 485, and a lot of residents had become very concerned about it. They worried about potential noise, environmental impacts, higher utility bills. There was an online petition that had nearly 3,000 signatures. So this week, the mayor, John Higdon, called up the developer and said, ‘I just don't think we have the votes for this.’ And so the developer agreed to withdraw the rezoning petition that was needed — another data center encountering some problems in our region.
Terry: Data centers in general are kind of the current big point of contention, with controversies over building them in Statesville, Mooresville and elsewhere.
Mecia: It does seem like we're seeing more opposition to these data centers. They've been around for a little while in different parts of the region. Meta, the parent of Facebook, has one in Cleveland County. Apple has one in Catawba County. As these things are starting to get a little more attention in the more urban areas, you're starting to see some opposition and some concerns mounting.
Terry: Moving on to some entertainment news now, a new concert venue is planned for uptown Charlotte. How big is it going to be, Tony?
Mecia: Tepper Sports and Entertainment is planning an 89,000 square foot concert hall right next to Bank of America Stadium. It would seat about 4,400 people. I talked to people in the music industry in Charlotte, and they were saying this really would fill a need because you don't have concert venues of that size that have indoor space. You have Skyla Credit Union Amphitheater. It's about the same size, but it's, of course, an outdoor venue, so you can't really use it in the winter.
But everything else is either kind of more like 2,500 seats or 8,500 seats. So this is kind of a little bit of a sweet spot. They say you could get some more national and regional acts coming through Charlotte, particularly in those winter months.
Terry: Finally, the former director of Opera Carolina recently addressed rumors of embezzlement at his former company. What’s that all about?
Mecia: There's been a little bit of turmoil and turnover at Opera Carolina lately. The former artistic director, James Meena, who'd been there for 25 years and left this year, he took to Facebook a couple of weeks ago to say that allegations of him embezzling money from Opera Carolina were simply untrue. There have been no public allegations that I'm aware of against him, but he apparently says that there's gossip and innuendo circulating and he wanted to push back against that. Like I said, Opera Carolina it's under new leadership. They have some new staff members there. It certainly seems like a little bit more beneath the surface going on as well.
