When it comes to uptown, the naming rights don't outweigh the naming wrongs

The city of Charlotte is thinking about raising money for an uptown entertainment district by selling off the naming rights. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his On My Mind commentary, wonders if that would have the opposite of the desired effect.

We have a cat. His name is Jack Reacher, after the rugged and sometimes vicious hero of the Lee Child novels. Trust me, the name fits. But … we’re not stuck on it.

We are open to calling him Duke Energy Cat, or Lowe’s Home Improvement Cat, or even Krispy Kreme Kitty. The name is yours, if the price is right.

This is basically what the city of Charlotte is thinking about doing with the “festival district” now being planned on three acres near the Spectrum Center uptown.

A consultant who spoke to the City Council last week estimated that the city could make up to $137 million by selling off naming rights to parts of the district, including a new bus station.

In case you hadn’t heard, that new bus station would be moved underground so developers could build more on top. That means the people who use city buses—generally, folks who are poorer and Blacker and browner than the rest of uptown—would be moved literally out of sight. We’ll come back to that another time.

For now, let’s think about the naming rights. The consultant, Sean Moran, envisions it being called something like the Bank of America District. BofA already has the Panthers’ stadium and the biggest skyscraper uptown, but who knows, maybe they’d want in on that, too.

And, look: Marketing works. That’s why you see and hear constant ads on TV and YouTube and maybe even your favorite public radio station. Sometimes, without even knowing it, we pick one toilet bowl cleaner over another because we heard about the first one in an ad.

In Nashville, they sold the naming rights to the new Nashville Yards project to three companies, including one called Pinnacle Financial Partners. But I can’t imagine a single person saying “Hey, let’s go down to that block party at Pinnacle Financial Partners Nashville Yards.” Only a complete corporate toad would ever say that.

I’m not sure if a festival district engineered by the city can ever be cool. But giving it some cheesy corporate name just for a couple million bucks a year guarantees that it will never be cool.

Charlotte has a terrible history with “festival districts” anyway—just look at the Epicentre, and CityFair, and the infamous Street of Champions during the 1994 Final Four. If you’re going to ask for corporate money, get them to spend it on subsidizing rent for dive bars and art studios and other places that will make uptown feel more alive. Let the people organically come up with a name for it.

None of this common sense applies to the cat, by the way. Spend enough money to keep him knee-deep in salmon and you can call him whatever the heck you want.

Tommy Tomlinson’s "On My Mind" column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.