Don't cry, I'll be back

Just an alert for whatever faithful readers are out there: I'm working on several other in-house duties this week and next and won't be posting to Naked City as often as usual. You may now begin your lamentations or celebrations accordingly.

Look for more regular Naked City blogging starting the first week in July.

Stumpf to Chamber: Banks 'don't build buildings'

This will be news to retired BofA CEO Hugh McColl, and his multiple lieutenants:

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf (left, in file photo), speaking to the Charlotte Chamber's kickoff breakfast for its inter-city visit described the role of banks. "We don't build buildings," he said. " ... We listen to dreams." (His point, to be fair, is that banks finance what others do.) But in the QC, of course, we believe that banks do build buildings, and lots of them. Indeed, the breakfast was taking place on the 40th floor of a building that a predecessor of Stumpf's bank (First Union) built. (Technically, I suppose, Childress Klein built it.)

McColl is to speak today at a Chamber lunch, on "Vision for Center City." I expect he'll mention a few buildings that banks have built around here.

Stumpf again, talking about TARP: "It was not a bailout." Hmmmm.

Interesting tidbit: Stumpf says he grew up on a farm in northern Minnesota, one of 11 children. UPDATE 11:03 a.m.: Our own Observer Minnesotan, cartoonist Kevin Siers, says "Uff da!" His Google research turns up a hometown of Pierz, in Morrison County, in central Minnesota. I told him to the rest of the U.S. anything north of the Twin Cities is Northern Minnesota.

Spotted on Realtor Allen Tate's lapel: A green sticker with a circle around an I-485 logo, saying "CLOSE THE LOOP." Who wants to bet I'll see more of those?

UPDATE: 11:05 AM: Want to see Jim Rogers on the Colbert Report: Here's a link.

More later. Follow Tweets about the trip @nakedcityblog and at hashtag: #icv09

Chamber: Don't blame us for Overstreet

Charlotte Chamber president Bob Morgan, on the eve of the Chamber's annual intercity trip (this year to – ta da! – Charlotte) called to report that an oft-repeated story that uptown's overstreet walkways emerged from a Chamber inter-visit to Minneapolis is, well, wrong.

Morgan said he, too, had repeated that story. But (because of a question from yours truly seeking other examples of Chamber-trip-inspired developments) he hauled out the entire list of Chamber intercity visits dating to 1956. The only Minneapolis trip was in 1993, two decades after the first overstreet walkway went up.

Photo: Skywalk under construction in 2001 photo

Why "blame" in that headline I wrote? (It's my word, not the Chamber's.) I'm among many who criticize the walkways for hurting the possiblities for uptown retail. They make it hard to find the stores, unless you know they're in there. And they make the street-level experience blander, because you can't window-shop because the stores are hidden. I'll be fair, now, and note that in cold, rainy weather they're very popular. Yes, I use them too, upon occasion, typically the "ice storm" occasion.

I dug into our electronic archives which date to 1985 and found a painful number of references – some written by me, others by esteemed Observer reporters such as Doug Smith, Jeff Elder and M.S. Van Hecke – to this mythological, walkway-inspiring Chamber trip to Minneapolis.

Morgan speculated that the walkways were inspired by Minneapolis, but not on an official Chamber inter-city visit.

He may well be right. Here's the earliest mention of them I found. (No, I didn't take time to visit our newsprint clips, fun though such visits can be.) This was written in a 1986 news article by Ted Mellnik who, then as well as now, is noted in our newsroom for his reportorial precision: "The Overstreet Mall was proposed in a 1971 center-city development plan by Vincent Ponte, who said it would create 'a city within a city.' Development was spurred in the mid-1970s when a group of Charlotte business and civic leaders visited Minneapolis, which has a walkway system."

Update: 6:45 p.m.: Got an e-mail from Carl Johnson who offers this info: "Mary, my recollection is the Gibson L. Smith, real estate man and civic leader (on council, I think, and ran for mayor but lost) deserves a lot of credit as a promoter (I say that in the neutral sense) for the overstreet walkways. Carl Johnson"

(I'll be going on as much of this week's Chamber "visit" as I can manage away from the job. So blog postings may be sparse. I'll try to Tweet @marynewsom or @nakedcityblog. The Chamber is asking all Twitter-users to use this hashtag: #icv09.)

My picks for best places to stand in Charlotte

I asked your opinions - and thanks for sharing, everyone - but didn't give mine.

Yesterday I pointed to a list (link here to blog, and here to list) about the best places to stand in the U.S. and asked about Charlotte spots. But I didn't include any of my own choices. These things require pondering, you know.

I concur with those who mentioned Queens Road and the cathedral of oaks, and the magnificent corner of Kingston and Lyndhurst avenues (see photo above) in Dilworth. Indeed, I spotlighted both places in a piece I wrote some years back about Great Streets in Charlotte. Brevard Court uptown was another in that series.

My favorite spots to stand in Charlotte (for today, at least) are listed below. Note, I'm including only inside the city limits, so Crowders Mountain is out, as well as various funky downtowns in other municipalities like Matthews or Davidson. And ask me tomorrow and I may have a completely different list. NoDa on a gallery crawl night is great. Looking out from the 60th floor of the BofA Corporate Center is great – but not open to the public.

Here's my list:

3. In line at Price's Chicken Coop (at left) just after you've bought a quarter-dark dinner (or chicken livers) with tater tots and the hot grease is just starting to soak through the cardboard box.

2. The vaulted passage way alongside The Green uptown – one of the best designed spaces in the city. It just makes you feel grand to walk down it. The fans overhead are a nice touch for a hot climate.

1. Inside the First Presbyterian Church sanctuary on the Sunday before Christmas, with the old burnished wood, the royal blue carpets and cushions, as the brass and timpani and cymbals play and everyone is singing "Joy To The World."

Where's best place to stand in CLT?

Stumbled on this list of the Best Places To Stand in the US.

Oddly, it doesn't mention the old abandoned Upton's near Eastland Mall (above), or anything along Independence Boulevard. Not even a peep about Dee-Dee Harris' lingering grass-covered crater at Park and Quail Hollow roads.

Or sights from the observation decks atop the bank towers uptown. Oops. There ARE no observation towers. It doesn't add anything in Charlotte. Hmmm. If only we'd taken the late cartoonist Doug Marlette's advice and at The Square uptown, instead of those insipid statues, installed the Eternal Barbecue Pit.

My two-cents-worth: The list needs more attention to the North Carolina treasures. Cape Hatteras lighthouse comes in at No. 90. I'd rank it higher than – dare I say it? – Graceland. And definitely above the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, though I confess I haven't visited that one.

My favorite place to stand in North Carolina: Atop the Art Loeb Trail (the Tennant Mountain peak) near Shining Rock Wilderness, off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Brevard. If you want your heart to expand with gladness that you're alive, that would be the spot. Another fave is a view from a peak in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.

Homes built, but no street: Did city goof?

What do you do when the developer who built your house goes out of business before he builds the street your house is supposed to sit on?

A group of homeowners caught in this mess wants the city to help them get their street built. (It probably doesn't hurt their ability to get the city's attention that they've hired former Mayor Richard Vinroot to be their attorney.)

Deputy City Manager Ron Kimble gave City Council a briefing Monday night. Some of the homeowners were in the audience. The street was to be an extension of Wright Avenue, which now dead-ends at a creek. The houses are near the Lomax Avenue entrance to the Charlotte Swim & Racquet Club off Sharon-Amity Road. Seven houses are built and have been sold. They have an alley in back, and they can roll their garbage bins to Lomax Avenue. The folks living there say their addresses are on Wright Avenue (the phonebook confirms this), and that GPS shows the street having been built. That tends to confuse the police and FedEx. They worry about whether emergency services could find them quickly in the event of a fire, crime or health problem.

But because the subdivision was laid out before the city's subdivision ordinance was adopted, Kimble said, it didn't fall under the ordinance's rules, and the builder, Mick El-Massri, didn't have to put up a street bond – to ensure the street got built. Now, the developer has defaulted and may be facing bankruptcy, Kimble said. (Locust Lumber Co. now owns some of the unsold property, but a court records search finds dozens of civil suits but no bankruptcy filing for the developer.) The houses are built – and there's no street.

A second clump of houses by the same developer, Mick El-Massri, sits on another section of unbuilt Wright Avenue off the dead end of Delane. Lisa Hunter, who's lived in one of the streetless houses for almost three years, said the developer had told her he was going to use the money from selling two of those empty houses to finally build their street. But the city wouldn't issue a certificate of occupancy – because there was no street built.

I went for a look after the council meeting. The situation is, truly, a mess. Multiple property owners are affected. The city's street policies call for Wright Avenue to connect over the creek, which will drive up the cost of building it. But the homeowners prefer that to a dead end, they say.

"It was in our contract that the road would be built within a year," Stacey Searson said. She and her husband Tom have been there about 2 1/2 years. "We thought we were legally protected."

City officials said they'll look into the quickest way to get the street built, and into preventing this situation from happening again. Indeed. Here's the scary part: Kimble said there are little infill lots all over the city that might fall into this same Catch 22.

Developer to chair planning commission

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission on Monday elected developer Stephen Rosenburgh succeed Dave Howard as chair, starting July 1.

Rosenburgh – president and CEO of US Land Investments, which does work throughout the Southeast United States – grew up in Toronto and lived there until moving to Charlotte 16 years ago. His company Web site says he founded Jordan Homes, and some of his projects included Carrington, The Greens at Birkdale, Legend Oaks and Stonebridge. He has also been on the N.C. Banking Commission.

I called Rosenburgh to set up an interview but he demurred. He said he doesn't want to talk about chairing the planning commission until Howard's term ends, and until he's had a chance to talk to Planning Director Debra Campbell and until after he returns from an August vacation.

The planning commission is a 14-member advisory body which, among other things, recommends to the City Council whether to approve or reject rezoning proposals. It has a history of being developer-friendly: Of its current members, at least eight work in real estate, development or construction. That may change as new appointees are named, but for at least the past 15 years typically half or more of its members have made their livelihoods working in real estate and development.

Howard, who is running for City Council this fall, is vice president for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, a nonprofit group that develops affordable housing, sometimes in partnership with other developers.

Slack DOT care may worsen flooding

Since we're expecting heavy rain, what are the chances Charlotte's streets will flood? Pretty high, especially since a good many storm drains on our streets have been clogged with debris since the last heavy rain – or even longer.

The photo above is a drain on a city-maintained street near where I live. It has been clogged with debris for weeks (maybe months, I only noticed it after the recent flooding). Its inability to drain is one reason a nearby low spot on Wendover Road collects water during heavy rains, often putting a lane on Wendover under water. And the drains along Wendover itself are, if anything, even more clogged.

I asked Charlotte DOT director Danny Pleasant recently about the clogged drains. He said his department clears them and to report clogged drains on the city's 311 phone line. (I confess I haven't called 311 about the drain in the photo; I wanted to see if it would get cleaned anyhow. It hasn't.) Update: I got a call about 4 p.m. from the city's solid waste services department. It cleans the tops of drains, and CDOT cleans the underneath and the catch basins. I suspect the drain in the photo above will be cleaned by tomorrow morning. We'll see.

But Wendover, Pleasant said, is state-"maintained" (quote marks mine). I wonder how many years it has been since the state has cleaned Wendover or its drains.

Note this photo of dirt in the Wendover gutters. The dirt is so deep the weeds are, in some spots, knee high. The state's road maintenance efforts are, well, the best word is slovenly. Is it this bad in other N.C. cities? Readers in Asheville, Greensboro, Raleigh, etc., are state-maintained roads in your city similarly clogged with years of dirt and debris?

I will note, however, that homeowners who aren't keen on flooded streets could always clean the storm drains in front of their houses and dig the dirt from the gutters.

Where does the dirt come from? Some of it's yard-care debris that's blown into the street (How about telling your landscapers to stop that?) and some is from construction sites, where contractors break the erosion laws and let soil run off into streets and creeks – the largest cause of water pollution. The gutter near the storm drain in the photo above is 3 inches deep in sandy sedimentation from two construction sites up the hill.

This meeting is adjourned

You be the judge. Was Mayor Pat McCrory unnecessarily curt, or avoiding a politically sticky situation or just being time-efficient after a long meeting Monday night, when a delegation from the gay/lesbian alliance appeared before Charlotte City Council?

Here's the background: The council's 5 p.m. dinner meeting was to be followed by a Citizens Forum, a regular event where the council hears from the public but doesn't take action or engage in much discussion, though upon occasion a council member will ask questions or make comments. Only one speaker had signed up, a man from Durham.

He turned out to be Joshua Lee Weaver, accompanied by a dozen or so local folks from Charlotte's gay and lesbian community. He sought the council's approval of "A Resolution in Support of Civil Marriage for Same-Sex Couples." (He must have had Charlotte confused with Chapel Hill or something.) With his allotted 4 minutes at the microphone, he asked for their support and read the resolution.

When Weaver finished, Mayor McCrory said quickly: "Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned." And council members began packing up. Weaver said something like, "Well, I was hoping for some feedback." McCrory said he appreciated him being here, but didn't comment on the substance of the proposal.

Afterward, Weaver said two municipalities had passed the resolution already – Chapel Hill and Carrboro – and Durham was considering it. He said other cities would be asked to pass it but wasn't sure which he'd approach next.

Observer reporter Julia Oliver asked McCrory after the meeting if he'd put the resolution on the agenda and McCrory said he wouldn't.

To be fair, McCrory and several council members afterward did go speak to Weaver afterward, and to some in the group accompanying him. I noticed Susan Burgess and Anthony Foxx, and there may have been others. Council member Andy Dulin sent a letter to the Observer today saying he doesn't support civil unions – "One man, one woman is what I believe" – and noting that none of the seven Democrats at the table said a word to Weaver. He's right. Of course, the mayor closed the meeting before anyone had time to say a peep.

Stimulus bucks? Tar Heels get hosed

Want to get mad? Here's a good one for you:

A USA Today analysis of where stimulus money has gone so far, compared to unemployment rates, shows North Carolina (jobless rate 10.8 percent, among the nation's highest), is getting way below its per capita share of stimulus money. Here's a link to the article.

Here's the telling paragraph: " ... the first contracts [for spending stimulus money] have amounted to only about $7.42 per person on average in the eight states with unemployment rates higher than 10% last month. By comparison, government records show it has awarded about $26 worth of contracts per person in North Dakota, whose unemployment rate is the nation's lowest."

The nationwide average is $13 per person, the story says. In North Carolina, the figure was only $1.56 per capita.

No wonder we're laying off teachers and gutting our colleges and universities. You'd think President Obama would be a tad more grateful for his much-touted victory here last November.

Even South Carolina, where Gov. Mark Sanford is trying his best to stop incoming stimulus money despite its 11.5 percent jobless rate, got $81.34 per capita. Sanford must not be trying hard enough.

Blue Line or Green Line?

Should the existing Blue Line be renamed the Green Line, to please UNCC? Tomorrow the Metropolitan Transit Commission takes up the discussion at its 5:30 p.m. meeting. Here's a link to the meeting agenda.

At first, it sounds like an easy and simple decision: The transit line that's planned to run from uptown to UNC Charlotte should be the Green Line, to reflect the 49ers school colors.

But with transit – and transportation in general – things are rarely as simple as you'd think. Here's the biggest sticking point: The new line will be a continuation of the existing Blue Line. That is, you could hop on at I-485 outside Pineville and ride all the way to beyond UNCC.

There's already been significant investment in "Blue." Even the train cars are blue, not to mention the signs, etc.

As CATS officials note, they couldn't find any other transit system that "changed colors midstream" (hmmm, interesting turn of phrase). It might well confuse riders. I mean, we're not talking a lot of riders here with New York-caliber subway expertise (where one line simultaneously might have two numbers or letters or colors, and you have to notice whether you're hopping on a local or an express route, for instance). Starting on the blue line and ending on the green line might be as confusing as starting out on Woodlawn and, without turning, finding yourself on Runnymede and then Sharon Road then Wendover, and then Eastway. Or maybe Tyvola to Fairview to Sardis to Rama. Or ... well, I could go on but I won't.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, a Blue-to-Green Line transit corridor fits right in. How very Charlotte.

Agriburbia? Tell that to Detroit

My earlier posting on "agriburbia" – saying "Agriculture is the new golf" and reporting on an in-the-works development near here that will feature farm fields instead of a golf course or – brought an e-mail with this link to a story from the online Detroit Free Press.

It seems some visiting urban planners, noting the enlarging areas of disinvestment in the Motor City, have proposed that eventually the city will resemble clusters of villages surrounded by farmlands. Back to the future, indeed.

Does anyone know of any urban land that has successfully reverted to farmland?

I asked a soil specialist some years back about the feasibility of turning abandoned big-box stores and their huge parking lots back into farmland and was told that, unfortunately, the development scrapes away the topsoil, which takes centuries to create. Maybe with enough chickens and livestock one could replenish the soil?

'Agriculture is the new golf'

The latest career advice, I hear, isn't "plastics." It's "agriburbia."

A developer-land planner-type pulled me aside this week to talk about his newest project: A development, in the general vicinity of Kannapolis-Salisbury, that they're dubbing "agriburbia." It's a residential development but instead of common open space and big lawns, they'll have a civic farm, land leased to a farmer. There will be do-it-yourself options for backyard gardeners. They'll market it, he said, to people affiliated with the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis – the health-and-wellness related research operation.

The term "agriburbia," he said, was coined by a guy in Colorado. Sure enough, here's the Web site. "Agriburbia" is even trademarked. But it's such a great word it may have a life of its own, like "locavore." Its slogan: "Growing Sustainable Communities by the Bushel!" Its goal: "the re-integration of food production directly within the living environment ... by focusing on agriculture as the centerpiece of both new and existing communities."

This dovetails with a talk in Charlotte last fall by New Urbanism godfather Andres Duany, about what he termed "agricultural urbanism." It was Duany who quipped "agriculture is the new golf." By that, he meant an activity and marketing point for developments.

"Only 17 percent of people living in golf course communities play golf more than once a year," Duany said. "Why not grow food? By the way, food is very good-looking." (I wonder if Duany, an urbane Miamian, has ever seen fading tomato plants at the end of a hot, aphid-ridden summer, or squash plants wilting from vine borer assaults. But I digress.)

Duany suggested the $40 billion that Americans spend on lawn care might be better diverted to food production. And this may be the biggest eyebrow-raiser, coming from a devoted urbanist devoted it to agriculture: "The large lot (as in large-lot suburbia) can be justified primarily as the making of food." When Duany is trying to justify large-lot suburbia, you know the world is changing.

Being Andres Duany, he even came up with a "transect" (translation: context-appropriate designs) for agriculture in a range of conditions from rural (your basic farms, with farming village clusters) to center city (container gardens on terraces and rooftops). His transect has specific allowances for how many chickens are allowed – though no cluckers in the most dense urban neighborhoods. If memory serves, you can't have a rooster unless you're in one of the more rural zones in his transect. Whatever.

The local developers said they'll be going public in a few weeks. Theirs isn't "agricultural urbanism," they said, but suburbia with farms instead of big lawns. Stay tuned.

Transit lovers, and Portland haters (an update)

Friday, May 22, 12:21 PM update:
If you like reading about Portland, check out this piece from the Oregonian's Anna Griffin, whom some of you will remember as a former Charlotte Observer writer (who covered the growth beat here in the QC before moving to our Raleigh bureau.)

Today, a little something for transit-lovers and then for transit- and Portland-haters.

First, here's a newsy dispatch from Mary Hopper at University City Partners:

"The most recent cost estimate for building the LYNX Blue Line Extension from Center City to University City now exceeds $1.1 billion. That's a lot of money, to be sure. But is it too much money? A study paid for by University City Partners suggests that every dollar spent on transit construction will come back three-fold in additional development and increased property value and tax base within our municipal service district through 2035." Here's a link to the study she refers to.

Hopper, executive director for UCP, also points to a proposed high-rise office building from Bank of America:
"University City's proposed transit line is already spurring plans for intense transit-friendly development on North Tryon Street. Bank of America has requested a zoning change to allow up to 1 million square feet of offices in buildings up to 16 stories tall, just south of Mallard Creek Church Road. The wooded 24-acre site lies within a quarter mile of a proposed light-rail station on Mallard Creek Church Road. The Charlotte City Council will consider the request at its June 15 zoning hearings." Read more. And here's a link to the rezoning petition.

Finally, for those who like to read opposing opinions, here's some red meat for you anti-transit, anti-planning, anti-density readers: George Will on "Why Ray LaHood Is Wrong and Portland Stinks." [My title, not his.]

2:15 PM – A friend shares with me this riposte to George Will. Link here.
3:28 PM – A TV station in Portland is running an online poll on who would win if George Will debated U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat who's an avid supporter of transit, bicycling, pedestrians and planned growth. Link here.

High-speed rail roadshow comes to town

If you're hot for high-speed rail through the Carolinas, then pay attention Wednesday.

Charlotte will bat lead-off in a national high-speed rail vision road show – a series of workshops in seven U.S. cities put on by the Federal Railroad Administration.

The workshop – the only one to be held for the Southeast Corridor – will be 1-4:30 p.m. at the Renaissance Charlotte Suites Hotel, 2800 Coliseum Centre Dr. (off the Billy Graham Parkway).

If you'll remember, President Obama has offered up $8 billion in grants for high-speed rail corridors, intercity passenger rail and congestion grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, as a pirates would say). Competition is likely to be fierce. Last month I heard Xavier de Sousa Briggs, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, talk about what would give regions a leg up in competing. He said regions that can demonstrate solid regional cooperation will have an advantage.

N.C. rail insiders suggest it's not coincidence that Charlotte and the Southeast Corridor are first on the schedule. Folks from Atlanta are expected to attend. And let us hope our sister state to the South shows some interest, despite its governor's dislike of stimulus money.

Here's a link that will tell you more, including linking to the letter from FRA administrator Joseph C. Szabo. Szabo's letter says the FRA seeks input "to provide us with your regional visiton of high-speed and intercity rail networks," among other things.

If you want to attend you may RSVP here. And to submit comments for the public docket, click here. It's Docket No. FRA-2009-0045 and the deadline for comments is June 5.

Modern architecture -- Oh, the terror!

This may explain why I, and many other people, aren't so fond of Modernist-style buildings. We're instinctively reacting with fear.

(See my previous posting about the Mid-Century Modern home tour this weekend. Link is here.)

I stumbled on this piece from Fast Company about how surroundings shape our minds and bodies. Among its interesting tidbits: People instinctively prefer objects with rounded edges (think of arches, for instance) over sharp-edged objects (think of most 20th-century buildings, such as the Westin hotel in Charlotte, shown above, with the NASCAR Hall of Fame in the foreground). The theory is that it has to do with hard-wired fear of sharp objects.

Memo to architects designing libraries: High-ceilings in rooms encourage you to think more freely and abstractly.

And memo to minimalists: Clutter increases the "memorability" of a place. As the article says, "A generous scattering of objects generates a fondness for the place." (But I'm pretty sure that doesn't include dirty socks or last night's grease-splotched pizza box.)

Mid-Century Modern: Charlotte's bulldozer bait?

If you think Mid-Century Modern is outdated and ugly, and ought to be torn down, you're probably over 45.

The nonprofit group Historic Charlotte has put together a Mid-Century Modern home tour this weekend, (here's a link where you can see a list, a map and buy tickets) featuring 17 homes built from the 1950s to 1970s, to try to show everyone why a lot of younger people are interested in preserving and living in houses from that era. It's part of a whole month of celebrating Mid-Century Modern.

The houses range from modest to impressive, and with local architects Murray Whisnant and the late Jack Orr Boyte among those represented.

It's an architectural style and era not beloved around here – until recently. Diane Althouse, executive director of Historic Charlotte, told Tuesday night's Civic By Design forum that buildings from the era are in greater risk of demolition than others in Charlotte. And of course, we know virtually everything here that doesn't have preservation in its deed restrictions is at risk of demolition.

Here's a measure of how unpopular this modern architecture is. Last fall, in an unprecedented move, the City Council in a 6-4 vote, rejected a move to name a 1957, Jack Boyte-designed house in the Cloisters neighborhood a local landmark. The owners wanted the designation; the city-county historic landmarks commission wanted the designation, the state preservation office had concluded the house was eligible. Usually the council doesn't have a problem, if the preservation experts say something's worth designating, and the owners concur. But council members just said they didn't think the house was very attractive.

If you're old enough to think Mid-Century Modern is ugly, you're probably old enough to remember when Victorian-style buildings were being demolished because they were "too ugly" and far too many treasures were lost.

I confess to some ambivalence about Modernism. As generally carried out, it's too bleak and stark. One modernist building amid older, ornate buildings is sleek and elegant. A whole city (or even whole city block) of nothing but square angles, bare concrete and cold glass would be depressing. But the point of preservation isn't only to preserve buildings we think are pretty. It's to ensure that eras aren't obliterated.

And it's worth pointing out that buildings from this era are coming to be treasured and sought-after. I know of several people who are specifically looking to buy homes from that era.

Atlanta vs. Charlotte for 'King of South'

Atlanta Journal-Constitution weighed in last weekend on the Charlotte-Atlanta rivalry with a piece by former Observer reporter Dan Chapman: Rivalry to be economic King of South heats up.
Read it, then read the comments. Then tell me whether you don't suspect that a lot of the talk about how well (!!) Charlotte has dealt with growth and transportation comes from Atlanta types hoping to goad their legislature with some jealousy. The story says the Georgia leg won't let Atlanta or other metro regions impose sales taxes for roads, and won't even let MARTA use its own money to fill budget holes.

Is Charlotte doing things better than Atlanta? Depends on what you look at. Definitely we're doing better at tying land use to transit – at requiring transit-oriented development along our light rail line. Atlanta didn't do that during MARTA's earliest decades and results show.
Is Charlotte doing any better at controlling sprawl? That's a tough question. I think some of the counties and smaller towns in the region (Cabarrus County, Davidson, Belmont, etc.) are, indeed, doing better. Further, N.C. annexation laws have left Charlotte in a healthier situation and have allowed the city limits to expand, instead of being hemmed in like the actual city of Atlanta itself.

Yet Charlotte and Mecklenburg have done virtually nothing to preserve farms or any section of the county from suburban-style development, other than a few county parkland purchases. Eventually every square foot of the county will be developed except for those parts purchased for parkland or privately donated to land conservation groups such as the Catawba Lands Conservancy. No serious farmland or forestland protection measures have been taken by local governments other than Davidson.

Atlanta is definitely bigger. Is it better? I think that depends on what you're looking for and how closely you look.

Trashing public art -- again

Mayor McCrory, council members Andy Dulin and John Lassiter, can I make a request? If you don't like the city's 1 percent-for-art program, then end it. But as is, it's tediously predictable that whenever you get a presentation about what the money is being spent for, you go off on the program's administrators and trash the art.

Guess what. Their job is to administer the city program. The city program allocates 1 percent of the cost of most (not all) city projects and dedicates that money for public art.

Now, plenty of people can make good philosophical arguments for why government shouldn't be paying for art. It's a reasonable position: Art should be independent of government, because public money comes with strings attached. Public art typically isn't very cutting-edge, for instance, because that would offend the pols and they'd ax the money. Some people genuinely think art isn't what government should be doing, and I respect that view, even though I disagree.

But there are other good arguments about the value of art to the public and about the value of having artists in your city. And for now, city government (and the county, and the transit system) have concluded it's worth the fractional amount of money it takes to have public art.

The item getting people's attention is a project to put mosaic tile covers on trash cans along Central Avenue, as part of a Central Avenue streetscaping project. Here's a link to the slide presentation; mosaics are on page 6. The City Council heard a presentation on Monday, showing numerous public art projects. Dulin tallied up the cost of the mosaics – $42,000 for mosaics on the outsides of 12 trashcans, 4 mosaics each – and said, "That's $3,500 a trashcan." Then he asked if he could get one of those trashcans at the bus stop near Myers Park High School. "$3,500 per trashcan is a little bit out of line, I'm sorry," he said.

Lassiter wondered whether the primary colors of the mosaics would look good next to some murals also planned along Central Avenue, whose colors looked (in the slide show) more pastel. (Should we cut him some slack? He was suffering jet lag from a trip to Ireland.)
McCrory complained – as he does whenever public art comes up – that he prefers more representational statuary that depicts people and history. "I like the statues at The Square. I just don't think we have enough of them," he said. "The most comment I get from people is the statue at Myers Park Hardware [a privately funded statue of the late, eccentric Hugh McManaway]."

There were snickers and snide remarks about several of the art works. Robert Bush of the Arts & Science Council, which administers the public arts program, was stoic. Public art administrator Jean Greer kept a pleasant smile on her face. Surely they get sick of this, every time they appear.
OK, let's try it one more time: Not all art will please everyone. If it did, it would be awfully tame. Some people like abstract art, and I don't want the mayor, or any mayor, choosing what art I see. Some people prefer ancient Roman busts, or statues of nekkid goddesses or "The Thinker." But art changes with its era, and this art should reflect this era.

Putting art on a trashcan might just be a way to brighten up a part of town that, heaven knows, has felt decades of city neglect. Should all art be restricted to uptown or Myers Park, where more affluent people live? Should art not be allowed on trashcans, only walls?

This is silly, fellas. Can't we just move on?

Was Charlotte's Maya Lin piece an early "Wavefield"?

Was Charlotte's not-so-lamented lost artwork "Topo" (above, in happier days) an early incarnation of the undulating earthworks for which artist/architect Maya Lin is now famous?

Read this New York Times article from today about a Lin work, Storm King Wavefield, at the Storm King Art Center in New York. Look at the wavefield. Does it not remind you a bit of the now-demolished "Topo" Lin did early in her career, in Charlotte?

The piece I did about Gumby and public art (read it here) mentioned Maya Lin's landscape art for the now-demolished Charlotte Coliseum on Tyvola Road. When the City Council turned thumbs down on Joel Shapiro's proposed sculpture, a.k.a. "Gumby," the public art commission turned to the young Yale-graduate Lin, who had won worldwide acclaim for her 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. She and Henry Arnold of Princeton collaborated to create "Topo" – nine large, ball-shaped Burford hollies arranged on an undulating median at the Coliseum. The original plan called for a misting system so the balls would appear to float. That idea was dropped because of its cost.

"Topo" was installed in 1991. It was pleasant, and I always liked the undulating berms, the shaping of which Lin herself supervised on site. But unless you were in a helicopter, it was a bit hard to get the overall sense of "Topo." And it always seemed to me that any sculpture lively enough to have acquired a name even before it was built would have become a kind of beloved civic character – maybe not as beloved as Charlotte Hornet Muggsy Bogues, but beloved nonetheless.

Look at Lin's work since then (somehow, "Topo" doesn't show up on her Web site) and it's clear she has put that undulating earth concept at the center of much of her recent work. Storm King Wavefield looks magnificent – like a mature and confident version of the baby version in "Topo." As Lin's fame has grown, "Topo" might well have become notable simply for being one of her earliest.

The city sold the Coliseum for private development, and the building was imploded in 2007. The new owners tried unsuccessfully to find someone to adopt "Topo" and its nine hollies. "Topo" was demolished in 2008. The photo below shows the work in its last days.