Charlotte keeps growing, but one offshoot of that growth is certain places that seem not to grow at all. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, takes a look at two uptown structures that are frozen in place for different reasons.
Those of you who were living in Charlotte back in the financial crisis of the late 2000s might remember that the city was suddenly filled with zombie buildings. Thousands of homes sat empty after shady subprime mortgage loans led to a surge of foreclosures. Unfinished skyscrapers weathered in the sun as developers ran out of money. Our official city bird — the construction crane — nearly went extinct.
I’m not saying we’re headed back to those times. The construction cranes are thriving again, for one thing. But the recent news has highlighted a couple of uptown buildings that, for right now, remain among the walking dead.
There’s a massive parking deck at North Tryon and 11th Street that has been pretty much finished since all the way back in 2017. It has 1,300 parking spaces and was supposed to provide parking for a development that would have had as many as 400-some apartments. But the apartments have never been built.
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The Charlotte Ledger reported last week that Levine Properties, which built the deck, might now try to open it without the apartments. (FYI, Levine is also the landlord for WFAE’s building on Seventh Street uptown.) Operating a standalone parking deck might require rezoning and other red tape. So it’s likely to be an empty concrete honeycomb for a while longer.
Meanwhile, over in Second Ward, the old Board of Education building has been shuttered for more than a decade. It was supposed to have been demolished years ago as part of a plan to redevelop the old Brooklyn neighborhood, which was once a hub of Charlotte’s Black community before it was razed as part of urban renewal in the ‘60s.
The problem is, the developer on the project, The Peebles Corporation, keeps stalling. The city chose Peebles way back in 2016 to redevelop the Second Ward land but nothing has been built. And now Peebles is saying it needs more time to tear down the Board of Education building because there’s more asbestos inside than they thought. They currently have a deadline of July 28 to demolish the building. I would put my money on it still being there on July 29.
Sometimes, a piece of property seems cursed. You’ve probably seen a street corner that looks perfect for business, but everything that opens there washes out in a year or two. The parking deck over on 11th feels like a case of moving too fast. The Brooklyn development is definitely a case of moving too slow. If you’ve watched enough zombie movies, you know they can move at different speeds. But if enough of them gather, like they did back in the financial crisis … they’re deadly.
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.
