A Charlotte City Council committee today unanimously approved a proposed new code for nonresidential (i.e. commercial) buildings. This isn't a building code – those already exist. It's akin to a housing code, only it applies to buildings that aren't housing. I'll add a link soon as the city PR folks send me a pdf version. The draft ordinance isn't posted online.
It'll likely be up for final action on Sept. 28.
The issue is important for neighborhoods where retailers have left buildings behind and the buildings sit, empty, for months. (Take a look at the photo above, of the old Albemarle Road Upton's, built in 1978, photo taken in May.) Sometimes the vacancy occurs because a retail chain goes belly up; other times the company opens a new store, typically on a suburban greenfield site, and leaves the older building. Those vacant and decaying stores have the effect of signalling to other retailers: "Don't move here, retail doom awaits!" And the aura of decay can send a clear signal to other potential investors, too, of an area in decline.
The new code has been in the works since February 2008, when the council told staff to study and develop one. The council's Housing and neighborhood Development Committee has reviewed it three times: April, May and July, and a public hearing was Aug. 24.
To their credit, the city planners have begun pushing developers of new big box stores to agree to language in the rezoning agreement that puts some requirements on the retailer if the store goes vacant: keep up the building, help market it to new tenants, don't put a noncompete clause on the property. But that doesn't give the city any leverage against abandoned commercial properties built without any such requirements.
The city currently requires vacant nonresidential properties to be secure. The new code would extend to occupied buildings, and would require properties to be sanitary and safe, too. It would require property owners to maintain exterior walls, roofs, windows, etc. Broken windows and doors, holes in roofs and walls, garbage on the site and rodent or insect infestations would be potential violations. Near as I can tell, there's very little opposition to it from anywhere, so it should pass easily in a few weeks.
(And an aside, to forestall the inevitable suggestions that abandoned big box stores should be turned into public schools: School architects have studied that suggestion and concluded that state building requirements for schools make renovation of old big box stores more expensive than building from scratch. A charter school on North Tryon went into an abandoned K mart, but charter schools don't have to follow the same building rules as regular public schools. )
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21 comments:
How about turning them into prisons.
The commercial real estate market is tanking, so let's make it MORE EXPENSIVE to build or maintain CRE.
You just don't get that sort of brilliance anywhere.
How about short-term storage for illegal aliens until they are deported
I understand that abandoned businesses are not pretty, but we also have to remember that someone owns that building. And if it's empty, you can bet that they're loosing money. Increasing the cost will only make things worse. The city is looking at this as an opportunity to basically steal these properties from the people who are already struggling. Thanks GovCo.!
The City of Charlotte decided to barricade Independence Blvd into an Interstate causing the death of buildings along that corridor, then they complain about vacant big box buildings instead of paying the property owners for such damage. They then failed to construct bridges to provide crossover access. Now they have plans to extend this barricade along Independence Blvd instead of building an elevated Interstate from Uptown to I-485, that allows traffic to flow underneath. Then with the vacant Upton's on Ablemarle Rd, crime also contributed to the closure and the vacancy of many buildings and Eastland Mall. Crime is terrorism on businesses and fear chases shoppers away, so the City needs to address social problems first with more jails, real punishment plus job training instead of blaming vacant property owners, the real victims. Some criminals can not be rehabilitated and should have a GPS chip implanted in them, so we can track them like animals and instill some fear back on the them instead of shoppers.
Although tangential to this particular article, it probably is important to know whether Uptons actually owns that abandoned site, or someone else. If it is Uptons, what does that say about their prices, if those prices support carrying "dead" real estate? And if it is someone else, then their motivation for not finding a tenant is different from Uptons's motives.
Blight Me!
Elevate Independence?! Sure, that wouldn't have impacted retail at all???
These days, people shop more in nodal places, not linear strips. That includes power centers (Rivergate, Galleria), lifestyle centers (Parktowne Village, Epicentre), grocery-anchored neighborhood centers (Kenilworth Commons, Cotswold), and town centers (Birkdale Village, Philips Place).
Since past planners went crazy with commercial zoning along thoroughfares, we're now seeing more vacant strips between more active nodes, and not just along Independence. Even South Blvd., which isn't being turned into an expressway and already has light rail, is looking more and more like Independnece Blvd. in stretches. Mayor Pat didn't call it the "corridor of crap" because it was lined with urban development.
So is burglary taxation? I am still working on that.
This ordinance seems like a good idea and in the community's best interest. Whereas property ownership should have some responsibilities and expectations regarding upkeep and protecting the public health, safety, and welfare, I am sympathetic to the extra cost incurred by the property owners. Perhaps this could be offset by some reduction in property taxes for proven demonstration of commercial property upkeep while it is abandoned, unoccupied, and not producing revenue for the property owner.
Anonymous said,
"Some criminals can not be rehabilitated and should have a GPS chip implanted in them, so we can track them like animals and instill some fear back on the them.."
I'm all for this. Let's start with the Wall St. bankers, then we can do the Washington Lobbyists, then the Governor of South Carolina.
I'm not your ATM!
Boring.
I have seen the following so many times now I am going to call it a pattern: when two supermarkets try to operate in the same small mall, the mall is doomed. This happened at Tryon Mall and also North Park Center. In these cases, competition killed two whole malls. Tryon Mall limps along, barely now. Ironically, this mall has two competing Vietnamese restaurants which keep each other barely profitable by going after much of the same clientele. Also ironically, across from North Park Center two Mexican restaurants put each other out of business when the new one located literally right next door to the other.
Why the controversy about these worthless buildings?
Just TEAR THEM DOWN and REFOREST THE LAND THEY STOOD ON or else turn them in to big ponds or something else similar.
That would be a great job creation program, paying people to tear these buildings down and recycle whatever portions can be reused, and then reforesting them and/or turning them in to parks or public spaces or lakes or even large community gardens.
People need jobs nowadays, and thus MANY people would want to be part of these 'demolition' crews that would help to get rid of these ugly blights in our communities.
They are doing this in parts of Detroit - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-to-survive.html
I think the idea that buildings are disposable planned-obsolescence objects is near-Satanic in the waste, petroleum consumption, resource consumption, air pollution-caused deaths, etc., the concept entrails. There is enough garbage pumped out by our new global crap-mart already. Shall we just double our energy consumption, double our indebtedness to unfriendly petro-states, halve our national security, so we can make more garbage??? Which insane people refuse to be taxed to collect? Madness!
Jumper, What????????
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