Before the decade is out, uptown Charlotte and South End will be knit together a little more tightly. City leaders on Tuesday marked the start of construction on the Rail Trail Bridge, a $20 million pedestrian bridge spanning Interstate 277.
To talk about the business and real estate implications of the addition, Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: The bridge is set to open in 2028. It's not quite in the same league as the light rail many credit for kicking off the South End building boom, but this is still a big deal for businesses and developers, as well as pedestrians, right?
Tony Mecia: Yeah, I think it is, Marshall. This is just one more way to kind of connect those two areas. There are a few crossings over 277, but this will be a pretty nice 16-foot-wide, 280-foot-long path. Obviously, the Rail Trail you can imagine people walking their dogs, riding bikes, going for runs. This kind of stitches the two of them together.
Obviously, we've seen a lot of activity in South End, particularly the uptown side of South End along Moorhead Street. There's a lot of construction going on up there, apartments and office buildings, and this will sort of tie it a little more closely to uptown, which is one of the most vibrant parts of the city.
Terry: City leaders approved this project several years ago. Why has it taken so long to get going?
Mecia: You had a bunch of people involved, a bunch of entities involved. You had the city of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, the state. You had private companies donating money. U.S. Bank had pledged a million dollars. Then COVID hit.
I think any time that you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, things take a little while. But now they're ready to get going on it. The whole construction will take about 2.5 years.
Terry: The city is taking steps to build a $30 million animal adoption center. What’s prompting that, and where would it be located?
Mecia: Right now, the city has one such adoption center near the airport, and it's more than 30 years old. It's often overcrowded. This would allow additional space for people to come in and adopt pets. It would have about 130 kennels. It would be at 5400 South Tryon Street. It's about 4 miles from the current shelter, which is out by the airport.
After we published the story, we had some readers wonder why is it so expensive? Why is it $30 million for an animal shelter? And what the city told us is that the materials they need to use need to be very durable materials because they're washing these kennels a lot, there's a lot of different animals in there, a lot of people in there. So it's got to be a little more sturdy than, say, a typical apartment complex or an office building.
Terry: Over to the airport now. Charlotte’s largest carrier, American Airlines, said it has big plans to expand at hubs around the country, but not here in Charlotte. Why is that?
Mecia: Well, it has expanded a lot over the last few years. It has about 930 flights a day out of Charlotte. But it is sort of running out of space a little bit. There aren't very many available gates. American has about 90% of the gates at Charlotte Douglas. It says it's focusing on some other cities now, but that it's very committed to Charlotte and has made a number of improvements to the passenger experience.
Terry: Finally, on this Halloween eve, we have to talk about a tragedy that occurred earlier this week. The legendary pumpkin wall in Charlotte’s Elizabeth neighborhood collapsed. What happened?
Mecia: This is a wall that has been up every year around Halloween for more than 20 years. Neighbors carve pumpkins. They bring them together. They light them. And they place them on a wall that’s constructed of wooden shelves. Unfortunately, with all the rain this week, it weakened the stakes that went into the ground, made the wall unstable, and the wall toppled over, smashing about half of the 180 jack-o-lanterns that were on it. Organizers tell me they will rebuild in time for Halloween on Friday. It'll be a little bit smaller, but the tradition will still be alive.
