A manufacturing plant in McAdenville is announcing plans to shut down and lay off nearly 300 workers. According to a state filing, New Jersey-based Mannington Mills will shut down its Gaston County carpet manufacturing plant on Dec. 27. The company is citing a “continual decline in demand and unfavorable market conditions.”

Tuesday is the big day: Mecklenburg County voters will decide whether to approve raising the sales tax to fund a multibillion-dollar transportation plan. Transit Time has been covering the issue for years, and with Election Day fast approaching, here is an overview of the plan, followed by details of what it would do.

Before the decade is out, uptown Charlotte and South End will be knit together a little more tightly.

From Carolina barbeque to Cajun treats, sweets and donuts, food with a Mexican or Caribbean flair, there are dozens of food trucks feeding people in eastern North Carolina.

According to a small business survey, 93 percent of the businesses impacted by Helene have since reopened, but economic uncertainty and the lingering government shutdown are blocking the road to full recovery.

Insurance giant Pacific Life is opening a Charlotte office that will bring 301 new jobs. Gov. Stein said Tuesday that the California-based company will locate its office in the Queensbridge Collective development in South End.

In 2014, 61% of Mecklenburg voters rejected a plan to increase the sales tax by a quarter of a penny, from 7.25% to 7.5%. Most of the money would have gone to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

The first phase of Charlotte’s mixed-use medical district just outside uptown, The Pearl, opened in July. It includes a campus of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, a surgical training center, and medical technology companies. But it’s what The Pearl doesn’t include that has some city and county leaders wanting answers.

The City of Salisbury has been awarded $850,000 through the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Rural Transformation Grant Fund. It will support renovations to a 30,000-square-foot building located on South Main Street, formerly known as the Wells Fargo Building, with improvements to lighting, flooring, fire and HVAC systems. When completed, the facility will house event and office space.

You can probably picture one right now: A vacant, overgrown piece of land, maybe fenced off, where nothing ever seems to get built even though everything around it is booming. These lots dot Charlotte, blank spaces in a sea of construction that become permanent question marks. The Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter this week dug into the question of what plagues some of these more prominent spots.